


Help us to Survive

by solrosan



Series: Eating us Alive [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Discussion of drugs, Discussion of pro-ana, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eating Disorders, Gen, M/M, Suicide, discussion of self-harm, discussion of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-02-27 22:06:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 34,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2708411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solrosan/pseuds/solrosan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A crime scene involving a dead anorexic woman hits close to home for John and Sherlock, leading John to discover a disturbing pattern and Sherlock to face his eating disorder in new light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The raw first draft of this story was written around the time I finished posting Eating us Alive again. At that time, its sole purpouse was to entertain a friend. It was never my intention to create actual plot and make it public, but with the help and inspiration of [Nagaem_C](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Nagaem_C/pseuds/Nagaem_C) that happened anyway. I’m so grateful for the support throughout this, thank you.
> 
> I apoligise in advance for the severe hand waving I’ve occasionally done when it comes to medicine and to criminal law.
> 
> * * *
> 
> For M
> 
> * * *

The victim, a nineteen year old woman lying on her back on a bed at the Rosewood Hotel, looked like an Auschwitz prisoner. A well groomed Auschwitz prisoner in a pink bathrobe and perfect make up. The cleaning crew had found her. Apparently she had checked in yesterday, the _Do Not Disturb_ sign was still hanging on the door handle. The room was neat; she hadn’t brought more than the large handbag on the bedside table.

John was standing next to the bed, his eyes fixed on her nails. They had absolutely nothing to do with the case – at least not as far as he could tell – but they were easier to look at than anything else, even if the signs of malnutrition were as obvious there as anywhere else on her body. It made him feel nauseated, because it wasn’t that long since Sherlock’s nails had looked the same way.

Sherlock had his hands deep in his coat pockets, standing next to John and peering at the dead woman. The only thing indicating that he probably was as disturbed by her appearance as John, was that he stood perfectly still at the side of the bed instead of leaning over the body in his usual manner. 

John put his hands behind his back to stop himself from reaching out and touching Sherlock.

“Well?” Lestrade asked from the other side of the room.

“Sherlock?” said John quietly, tearing his eyes from the woman when Sherlock didn’t respond.

“It’s suicide,” Sherlock finally said, taking a hand out of his pocket to wave indecisively at the body. “She has… on her… It’s suicide. There has to be a note somewhere, most likely written before she got here. This isn’t related to the other murders.”

Lestrade frowned. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, this was a complete waste of time,” said Sherlock, leaving the room abruptly before anyone could stop him.

“What was— Is he all right?” Lestrade sounded confused. 

“I don’t really know,” John said, looking in the direction of the door.

Lestrade shook his head before turning to the dead woman again. “It’s sad, isn’t it, what we as a society do to young women? She must have been at this since she was just a kid.”

“That’s a too easy explanation,” John half-muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing, just…” said John, shrugging. “This isn’t dieting gone bad. If she’d wanted to look like a supermodel she would have stopped two stone ago.”

Lestrade raised his eyebrows.

“Never mind,” John said, pulling off the latex gloves he had put on when he entered the crime scene. “I should go and find Sherlock before he gets too far.”

“Yeah,” Lestrade said, sounding suspicious.

“I suppose it would be out of line to ask to see the note when you find it?”

“A bit, yes. But I can tell you if Sherlock’s right or not.”

John nodded a ‘thank you’ before leaving. He imagined he'd lost his chance of catching up with Sherlock at this point so instead, preparing for the worst, he headed to Baker Street. To John’s incredible relief though, he found Sherlock sitting on the stairs outside 221B, smoking. Sherlock glared at him as he approached, telling him to shut up about the cigarette, but John had no intention of saying anything about it. Instead he sat down on the step next to Sherlock, looking straight ahead.

“Hypoglycaemia,” Sherlock said after a moment. “That’s how she died.”

John turned to him, surprised. “You said it was suicide.”

“Insulin.”

“Oh.”

Sherlock took a last drag of the cigarette before flinging the butt into the street. “She wasn’t diabetic though, the injection marks weren’t made by someone who was used to sticking herself with a needle of any kind. Her handbag was probably full of empty units, not even Lestrade can miss that.”

“And the note?”

“The notepad provided by the hotel was brand new, no one had used it. She had to have either brought something to write on or done it beforehand. The latter is more likely since no note was displayed at the scene.”

“How did you know she even wrote one?”

“Most people do, it’s a statistical—“

“Sherlock.”

“She planned her suicide; checked into a hotel, brought her own bathrobe, folded her clothes neatly. And she had ink on her hand.” Sherlock gave John a short glance. “I’m surprised you didn’t notice that, the way you were staring at her hands.”

“I… I wasn’t looking at her hands,” John said. “I was looking at her nails.”

At that, Sherlock looked down at his own hands; his left ring fingernail was turning blue after Molly had closed a body freezer on it two days ago, but otherwise all nails were just fine. “Did you see how they pitied her?” he asked, still focusing on his nails. “How disgusted they were by her?”

“It might come as a surprise to you, but most people are generally disgusted by dead bodies. Even people working homicides.”

“This was different, and you know it. _You_ were disgusted by her.”

“No, I was _scared_ by her.”

Sherlock looked so guilty at that confession, that John felt he had to force a reassuring smile.

“Don’t worry, I’ll survive,” he said. “But how are you? You ran out pretty fast.”

Sherlock turned away from him again. “I’m fine.”

John recognised the conversation-killing tone all too well, but remained on the stairs as Sherlock lit another cigarette. It was five months since they had last touched this topic at all and even then it had only been John wondering if they really needed all the beans that took up about half the pantry. They hadn’t _actually_ talked about Sherlock’s eating disorder since they had gone back to permanently sleeping in separate beds fifteen months ago. John wasn’t going to press the issue right now, but a very unsettling feeling had started to brew in his gut and he knew he couldn’t ignore it forever.

“She…” Sherlock suddenly mumbled, but instead of continuing the sentence he shook his head and said: “Was I ever that bad?”

“No,” John said, just as quietly as Sherlock. ”At least not for as long as I’ve known you.”

“I don’t ever want them to look at me like that.”

“Sherlock, you don’t look anorexic.”

“Anymore.”

John cringed, staring down at the step below until he managed to present a neutral expression again. ‘Anymore’, that was the word. Sherlock didn’t look anorexic _anymore_. He hadn’t in years, actually, but in John’s nightmares he still did. John didn’t wake up screaming from those, as he did the ones about the war; instead he woke up feeling empty and disoriented, unable to separate the dream from reality. But Sherlock didn’t look anorexic anymore, and it was one of John’s greatest comforts.

Sherlock put out his cigarette more thoroughly than necessary, almost crushing the butt against the step, and stood up. “Let’s go.”

“What?”

“We still have a case.”

John sighed, but got up. “Sherlock…”

“Don’t,” Sherlock said, sharply. “Three people have been murdered. There’s a serial killer out there and Lestrade’s wasting his time trying to figure out the difference between a suicide and a homicide. This was an idiotic mistake, made by incompetent people, and I won’t stop doing my job because the woman in that room happens to have had an eat— Just, don’t. Okay?”

When the stream of words stopped washing over him, John nodded. “Yes, okay.”

“John, this is not—“

“I said okay,” John said, cutting him off. “And you’re right, we still have a case.”

Sherlock seemed surprised that it hadn’t turned into an argument, but he nodded and flagged down a cab to bring them back to Bart’s where they had been when Lestrade had called them about the new body. John swallowed a sigh as he followed Sherlock into the car. Yes, Sherlock was right – they still had a case – but this felt wrong. What felt even more wrong was that he felt relieved that there was something other than this dead woman for them to focus on. The serial murder case was another subject for them to talk about, but for the first time in years there was an awkward silence between them.


	2. Chapter 2

Seeing the dead woman at the Rosewood Hotel had been like pushing a button, instantly triggering all of John’s worst habits. He watched and he counted – both calories, trips to the bathroom, and minutes in between. He did his damnedest not to, because it was counterproductive; he knew Sherlock would retaliate if he noticed, and he knew Sherlock used cases as type of food control even when he was at his best, but he couldn’t stop. Luckily, if that was a word he was allowed to use in this case, the serial killer who murdered seemingly random people at upscale hotels didn’t have a very long cooling off period and just five days after the suicide, a real body turned up. 

The call from Lestrade had come at half past four in the morning. John was already up by then and, judging by the state of him, Sherlock probably hadn’t slept at all. They had still both been out the door within minutes, eager to get out of each other’s hair and away from what they weren’t talking about.

This time the victim, a middle aged man, had been found in the hotel’s car park, but there was no doubt that it was the same killer. John kept a safe distance from the crime scene itself where Sherlock argued with one of the forensic technicians in coveralls. From where he was standing, John couldn’t hear what they were arguing about, but based on body language and experience he’d say it was crime scene protocol and chain of evidence.

“Should we go over there?” Lestrade walked up to John, handing him a paper cup of questionable coffee.

“Ta,” John said, raising the cup. “No, this whole thing has had enough casualties without us trying to play heroes.”

Lestrade chuckled, covering it with a cough and quickly schooling his expression.

“Sherlock was right, by the way,” Lestrade said. “The girl at Rosewood, it was suicide according to the preliminary. Insulin overdose, apparently. I didn’t even know that was possible.”

John sipped his coffee much slower than necessary; the mere mention of the woman made a knot form in his stomach.

“It’s not a completely uncommon method in the diabetic or medical community,” he said with a grimace as he lowered his cup again. “I saw it once during my A&E rotation. It was a nurse from paediatrics, some of her colleagues brought her down and she was in a coma before we figured out what was going on. It wasn’t until someone noticed the missing insulin we made the connection, but it wasn’t too late. She woke up about two days later, no neurological damage at all.” He took another long, slow sip of coffee before sighing. “She jumped in front of a train six months later. I wasn’t there then, but I heard about it from a friend. I remember I got properly pissed that night.”

“Mm,” Lestrade mumbled. “I talked a bloke out of jumping once when I was still on the beat. He ended up shooting his pregnant girlfriend and her brother. Those times you really feel like you’re making a positive difference in this world, you know.”

John half-smiled. “Why don’t we ever talk about football, or something?”

“Because you haven’t watched a game from start to finish since you moved in with Sherlock.”

“Well, there’s that.”

They both turned their attention over to Sherlock for a moment. Sherlock was down on the ground now, examining god-knows-what while the forensic technician watched over him like a hawk. 

From the corner of his eye John could see Lestrade squirming, as if building up for something uncomfortable. John squared his shoulders for what he expected would come. In his obsessive watching of Sherlock lately, John hadn’t been able to miss that Lestrade was watching him as well. Not with the usual ‘please-don’t-mess-up-the-evidence’ look, but a more attentive, suspicious look. John didn’t like it at all, because he knew what Lestrade was looking for. He was searching for an answer to why Sherlock had run out from the last crime scene.

John couldn’t very well blame Lestrade for worrying or watching, since he was doing the same thing. It still bothered him, because it was by doing exactly this that he had figured it out all those years ago. There was no doubt in John’s mind that Detective Inspector would do the same and, John had no idea how Sherlock would react to that. At the moment, John didn’t know if Sherlock even noticed. Perhaps John only saw it because he recognised himself in Lestrade’s actions. Either way, Lestrade seemed to have come to some sort of conclusion, or questions that he needed answered to move on with his investigation.

After a disturbingly long build up, Lestrade finally asked: “How are you two doing?”

“Fine.”

John felt the word tumble out almost before Lestrade had finished the question. He sighed as he turned to meet Lestrade’s sceptical look with a weary smile.

“Too fast?”

Lestrade nodded. “A bit.”

John tapped his finger against the coffee cup, weighing options he didn’t really have while Lestrade scrutinised him. He could keep insisting that everything was fine, even if Lestrade obviously didn’t believe that; he could tell another half-truth, admit that something was off but refuse to go into details, asking Lestrade to trust his judgement (that was how he had conducted his relationship with the DI for years now, after all); or he could tell the truth, betraying all of Sherlock’s trust with one sentence.

“John?”

“Yeah, sorry,” John mumbled, shaking his head to get back to here and now. He turned to Lestrade, putting on one of his default smiles – it had been a long time since he had needed to use one of them and he could feel something breaking inside him as he did. “We’re okay, don’t worry.”

“What happened at Rosewood?”

“Nothing.”

“I’m not an idiot, John.”

“I know,” said John, sighing. “I know. Just… don’t ask me about it, okay?”

“It’s not drugs, is it?”

“What? No, god no,” John said, smiling in relief. It felt wrong to be relieved that Lestrade suspected drugs instead of the truth, but there it was: undisguised relief. “It’s nothing illegal. I promise.”

Lestrade seemed quite relieved himself.

“He’s okay. We’re okay,” John said. After a moment of hesitation he added: “Thanks for asking, though.”

Lestrade looked confused at first, but as if something became obvious to him in that moment he then smiled. “Anytime.”

John nodded, surprised at how much he actually meant what he had said. It was strange balance between wanting people to notice and wanting them to stay as far away from it as possible. Not quite comfortable exploring that balance further, John turned his attention back to the crime scene. Sherlock had moved on from not just looking at the body to touching it and the forensic technician seemed close to frantic.

“I think I need to get over there before Sanders starts to cry,” Lestrade muttered.

“Good luck.”

“You’re more than free to join me.”

“Thanks, I’ll pass,” John said, gleefully.

Lestrade made a face. He emptied his coffee, taking a deep breath, before heading for Sherlock, Sanders and the dead body. With an amused smile John watched how Lestrade took control over the crime scene by more or less sending Sherlock and Sanders to different corners of the car park for a time out.

John followed Sherlock with his eyes as he stomped away, clearly overplaying his annoyance. With each step he took his façade cracked, and by the time he stopped the only thing left was pure exhaustion. John looked away, allowing Sherlock the moment of privacy he needed to pull himself together again. Soon enough Sherlock was on his way back to the scene, loudly arguing with Lestrade the entire way there.

John sighed, and started to walk over to the others to help Lestrade defuse the situation. Apparently there was no use wishing for this case to keep going, after all.

* * *

Sherlock was alone in the break room on the third floor of New Scotland Yard. It was late, and he couldn’t remember when he last slept, but they had been promised the surveillance footage from the car park and he’d be damned if he went home without watching it.

Mug, cheap horrible tea, hot water from the coffee maker.

He knew the cupboards of this break room almost as well as he knew the kitchen at Baker Street. Few people came here, because it was at the far end of the corridor, and he could take a little longer if he needed to. It was appreciated, even if the only thing he ever consumed in this building was tea and the occasional bag of crisps if his blood sugar was getting too low.

Today he was far below his recommended calorie intake (and he didn’t want to think about the week as a whole), but it was okay. _He_ was okay. He was always about twenty percent short of his recommended calorie intake during cases and that was fine! Digestion slowed him down. The less he ate, the faster he would solve the case and the faster he would be able to go back to eating as he was supposed to.

Sherlock hesitated for a moment, but followed through and put two teaspoons of sugar in his tea. Usually he didn’t take sugar in his tea when on a case, but he’d had disturbingly few calories today. It was hard to precise when he couldn’t weigh his food, and he hadn’t allowed himself to do that in over two decades, but he knew he’d had too little to eat.

He stirred the tea slowly. The solute dissolved quickly and, just like that, he couldn’t tell by looking that there were about thirty extra calories in the mug. A perfect homogeneous mixture, as expected. When he brought it to his mouth he would once again learn that there was sugar in there though, even if he couldn’t see it. He would notice how sweet the otherwise bitter beverage was. The physical attributes of the sugar might have been dramatically changed, but the taste remained nearly the same, indifferent to whether it was in crystallised form or dissolved. It seemed to remain sickeningly sweet no matter state.

He dropped the spoon in the sink, staring down into the mug. He could _smell_ the sugar and his entire body seemed to revolt against the idea of drinking it. It was just thirty calories! It was nothing! It was 1.2 % of what he was supposed to have today. Even if he combined it with the cup he’d had this morning and the one he would be forced to have when he got home to put John at ease, it was still nothing – ninety calories was nothing. Sugar in the tea was nothing, and he had eaten too little for too long by now.

And he loved it.

And he hated that he loved it.

If he didn’t stop this soon they would notice. They would see that he was broken. That he was disgusting and— No! He slammed his hand down on the counter and summoned the memory of the woman at the Rosewood Hotel. Her tiny frame, the skin stretched over her cheekbones. The clear outline of her ribcage. Her frail hair. The nails John hadn’t been able to stop staring at. One of the constables had asked how long she had been dead, because he had thought she’d been mummified or decomposed or something equally stupid.

He would never end up like that.

He just wouldn’t.

However, he wouldn’t drink this tea either. His hand shook as he poured out the sweetened mixture. He could have something when they got home tonight. A toast with beans didn’t sound too bad. At least in theory. He cleaned out the mug, put it and the spoon in the dishwasher and took a glass of water instead. It wasn’t any calories, but it would fill him up and, as John used to nag him, keep him hydrated.

Sherlock leaned back against the counter, pressing the palms of his hands against his eyes. He needed to let it go. Sleep deprivation and low blood sugar were both things he was more than used to dealing with while during cases. He refused to accept why it was so hard this time. The anorexic woman had nothing to do with this case; he should be able to compartmentalise, but apparently he couldn’t.

He ran his hands through his hair, taking a couple of breath through his nose in preparation of going back to join the others. John’s eyes were on him as soon as he stepped into the room, but Sherlock pointedly ignored him. There was nothing wrong. He just needed to solve this case so that he could start eating, or at least sleeping, again. 

That was all.


	3. Chapter 3

The case which John would end up calling “The Sleepless Killer” on his blog had ended two days ago. Even though the total body count was six and the killing spree had gone on for more than a month – John and Sherlock had been involved for about three weeks – the arrest had been very undramatic and the man had calmly confessed during the first interrogation.

John and Sherlock were tidying up the sitting room in silence now that it was over. John threw away hotel brochures, paper clippings, copies of receipts and surveillance footage, just about everything that was lying around actually, while Sherlock took the pins out of the map that had hung above the sofa for the last three weeks. When John’s mobile rang, both of them jumped, but pretended not to notice the other’s reaction.

“It’s Lestrade,” said John, checking the screen before picking up.

“Seriously?” Sherlock muttered. “He can at least try to solve a case by himself before he calls. He’s not a complete moron. I know he solves some cases without messing them up.”

John rolled his eyes and took the call in the kitchen. When he came back Sherlock was standing in the middle of the room, folding the map – John didn’t understand why he bothered since they would throw it out anyway.

“What did he want?” Sherlock asked.

“He just wanted to tell us that the CPS is going to charge the guy with four accounts of first degree murder and one account of manslaughter.”

Sherlock frowned. “Which one aren’t they charging him with?”

“The fifth one, the woman at Corinthia.”

“Ah.” Sherlock looked sheepish.

“Yeah, we messed up that one.”

“He did it, though.”

“Yes, well…” John shrugged, sinking down in his chair. “He’s going away for the others. Let’s just be grateful that they didn’t decide to charge any of us for the Corinthia murder out of spite.”

Sherlock smirked. “You’d be a good serial killer.”

“Thanks,” John said, chuckling. “Most doctors would.”

“What a disturbing thought,” Sherlock mumbled, mostly to himself, as he turned his focus back to folding the map.

John nodded thoughtfully, turning his phone in his hands as he watched Sherlock. Right now, in the post-case phase, it was hard to notice that anything was off with him. Even for John. Sherlock seemed as calm and pleased as always – carefully closed dressing gown aside – and if John really wanted to, he could ignore the prickling feeling in the back of his neck. He could pretend that he hadn’t noticed the change in Sherlock’s eating habits after the suicide at the Rosewood hotel two weeks ago. 

It had started with sugar in the tea – which was strange enough – and buttered toasts when they’d stayed up late to work the case, but then it had become actual breakfast and even random glasses of milk; everything swallowed down with determination rather than wish to still hunger. It was all strange, but John could probably disregard all of it, because it wouldn't kill Sherlock to eat more during cases. Theoretically, it would even do him good, but at the same time John couldn’t help thinking that it would all backfire and that was something he didn’t want to risk.

He wet his lips once, before finally managing to find the courage to ask: “Did he… Has Lestrade talked to you about what happened at Rosewood?”

“Why would he?” asked Sherlock, shooting John a glare to shut him up. “Nothing happened.”

“He talked to me about it.”

Sherlock lowered the map, his frown disappearing. For a split second he looked completely mortified.

“I didn’t say anything,” John said quickly. “But you should perhaps talk to him.”

“It’s none of his business.”

“He thinks you’re doing drugs again.”

“Let him.”

“No!”

They glared at each other until John gave up, sighing.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Sherlock nodded.

“Then what?”

“Nothing.”

“Sherlock...”

Sherlock inhaled deeply. “I’m okay.”

“Well, I’m not.”

Sherlock’s eyes widened in shock. John felt slightly stunned himself. It was the truth, but he hadn’t planned on telling Sherlock that. He was far from okay. There had been times these last weeks when he hadn’t even been able to look at Sherlock without seeing him on the bed in the dead woman’s place.

“I’m not okay, Sherlock,” John repeated, because there was no backing down now. “I’ve barely slept since that crime scene at Rosewood, because I can’t stop thinking about that woman. She’s my worst nightmare. Coming home and finding _you_ like that is my worst nightmare.”

Sherlock kept staring at him for a long time, but when his brain caught up his expression softened.

“John, I’m okay.”

He sounded so sincere that John knew he would be able to pretend to believe him if he wanted to end this conversation now. Perhaps that’s what motivated him to wearily say: “Don’t lie to me. Not about this. Not now.”

At first it looked like Sherlock was going to protest; he raised his chin, his mouth turning into a frown. Then he just… gave in.

“Fine,” he muttered, putting the now-folded map on the table. “I’m not. Happy?”

John raised his eyebrows. ‘Happy’ really wasn’t the right word.

“I hate this,” Sherlock mumbled. “I _hate_ this. Why can’t I just….”

“It’s all right, Sherlock.”

“No.” Sherlock shook his head. “No, it’s not. It can’t take the work from me again.”

John blinked. “It?”

Sherlock gestured with both his hands at his body. John frowned, still not getting what Sherlock was talking about. When he finally did, the rest seemed to fall in place as well.

“That’s why you’re eating the way you do, isn’t it?” John asked. “To make sure no one finds out.”

“I don’t—“

“You don’t think I notice?”

Sherlock went pale. Then he rubbed his face with both hands, sitting down on the coffee table behind him.

“They will never look at me like they looked at her,” he said under his breath. 

It sounded like mantra, rather than something for John to hear, and John wondered just how many times Sherlock had told himself that over the last couple of weeks. John got up from his chair, walked across the room and sat down on the table next to Sherlock. 

“They won’t do that,” he said. “They know you.”

“Why would that change anything?”

John hesitated briefly before saying: “Do you remember what I told you about my gun?”

Sherlock’s head snapped up after demonstratively having stared down at the floor from the moment John moved out of the chair. When he saw that there wasn’t anything suicidal about John, he nodded.

“Do you remember what I said saved me?”

Sherlock nodded again.

“Do you really think that the only thing I see when I look at you is your eating disorder?”

“It’s not the same,” said Sherlock. “You don’t— They want me to do their job for them. They won’t think I’m capable of doing that if they know that I have an…”

“An eating disorder?”

Sherlock made a face, making John smile.

“If you only could see yourself the way I see you,” John said.

“You’re an idiot,” Sherlock muttered.

John still smiled fondly at him. “I know.”

They sat silently for a long time. At some point John took Sherlock’s hand, and when Sherlock gave a gentle squeeze, John took it as an invitation to rest his head on Sherlock’s shoulder.

“Can you sleep in my bed tonight?” John asked.

Sherlock let go of a long, trembling breath. “Yes.”

“Thank you,” John said, feeling quite sure that he wasn’t the only one who had had trouble sleeping lately.


	4. Chapter 4

_S and I stumbled over a dead body the other day._

John smiled at how absurd that sounded, but it was the only thing he could come up with and he had to write it down to get it out of his system. He had hoped to be able to just shake off his budding anxiety concerning Sherlock, but after spending the entire day at work thinking about the conversation they’d had yesterday, he knew he had to actually deal with this to be able to be there for Sherlock when he needed it. 

_If_ he needed it, John reminded himself, sighing. He had brought his laptop with him to bed. It was a poor substitute to Sherlock, but asking for company two nights in a row didn’t feel right. He had to deal with this on his own and therefore he was now sitting in the dark, aimlessly clicking around _LovED Ones_ – the online support group he had found for himself years ago on Mrs Hudson’s insistence. 

He had browsed the forum for roughly thirty minutes before he’d finally opened a new post and written that ridiculous sentence. He didn’t know where to start. _How_ to start… The event that had brought him back here wasn’t sharable in any way, shape or form, but what it came down to was that he just didn’t want to seek help at the forum anymore. It was over a year since had last posted anything of substance, and six weeks since he had even logged onto it at all. He hadn’t needed to. These days he mostly just sent private messages to his closer contacts, but that too had become more and more sporadic as Sherlock had moved further into recovery. Going back to the forum and admitting that he had doubts somehow felt like invalidating all the work Sherlock had put into his recovery and John didn’t want to do that.

He erased what he had written, because he really couldn’t begin a post like that. Someone had died, someone had committed suicide; his own issues aside, that was sad all by itself and he couldn’t make stupid jokes about it even if it made him feel better. Four, five attempts later he still didn’t know how to start. There was no way to put it delicately and he felt like he had to, because his discomforts and fears were triggered by someone else’s loss. His worst nightmare had become someone else’s reality.

Someone out there had lost their Sherlock a couple of weeks ago.

John closed the unfinished post without saving it and clicked his way to the grief counselling section of the forum. Usually he stayed away from that part, since he tried very hard to not think about that possible outcome, but there was no way he was going to post anything tonight without making completely sure that the woman at Rosewood at least wasn’t the loved one of anyone here.

The title of the post at the top of the grief counselling section was called _Our baby girl decided that it was enough now._ It was posted nine days ago by a user called bubblenox. John stared at the header for close to a minute. He didn’t know bubblenox, but had seen them around for years, and from what little he knew, bubblenox’s baby girl could very well be the woman whose nails he had been staring at. He didn’t want to click on the post, he didn’t want the confirmation, but he did it anyway.

The first thing under the cut was a photo of the woman he had seen at the hotel. She looked healthier in the photo than she had when he had seen her, but it was undoubtedly the same woman. If he’d had any remaining doubt, the date bellow the picture put her death on the day they had found her. He forced himself to read the text that bubblenox had written, a parent’s good bye to a dead child. When he was done he just closed his laptop and put it away.

The image of the woman on the bed, forever burned into his mind, clashed with the picture drawn by bubblenox. It was as it should be; a parent should remember the good times and the laughter and not think about a sealed off hotel room with coppers going in and out when they thought about their daughter, but the contrasts made John’s head spin. Her slightly open eyelids, her wax like skin stretched out over bone rather than flesh, her nails… and before he knew it the woman’s blond hair was replaced with dark curls and the pink bathrobe she had been wearing was a blue, silk dressing gown.

John rubbed his face, unsuccessfully trying to block out the images, but at least he stopped them from turning into Sherlock.

Sherlock…

John got out of bed before the thought was fully formed and he was down the stairs before he even began to question if this was sound or not. Questioning the sanity of what he did, didn’t slow him down, though. He opened the door to Sherlock’s bedroom without hesitation and on memory and pure luck he managed to get to Sherlock’s bed without hitting his toes on anything.

“Wha—? John?” Sherlock mumbled, turning around, as John climbed into his bed. “Is that—? What?”

“It’s me,” John whispered, lifting the covers to nestle up to Sherlock.

Seemingly on instinct, Sherlock moved to accommodate him. “Nightmare?” he mumbled.

John nodded, the lie being that much better than the truth. Sherlock wrapped his arms around John, holding him close. John closed his eyes and relaxed into his embrace, listening to his breathing as he fell asleep. When he was sure Sherlock was sleeping, John reached out and put his hand on Sherlock’s waist. It was a strange indulgence, being able to touch Sherlock’s body in that way, but to feel soft flesh where there previously had been hard angles and bones made John calm and peaceful, and soon enough he was asleep as well.

He was one of the lucky ones.

* * *

When John woke up the next morning he was alone and the flat was quiet. It frightened him at first, but then he remembered that he was here for his own sake and not for Sherlock’s. He lay on his back for a long time, staring up the ceiling and going over what he had read last night. With the light seeping in through the blinds it didn’t feel quite as terrible. The young woman, bubblenox had called her Micha, was still dead; she had still offed herself with insulin in a hotel room, but he had more distance to it now than he had had last night.

One thing bothered him, though: bubblenox hadn’t mentioned how Micha took her life, but they had expressed a wish to know if she had suffered much… and he knew the answer to that. With that in mind he forced himself to get out of bed. 

“Sherlock?” he called, walking into the kitchen, but got no response. 

He had no idea where Sherlock were off to, but it was just as well. If he was going back on the forum he preferred Sherlock to not be home. He brought the computer down from his bedroom, and with a large cup of tea and two well-buttered toasts by his side, he soon found himself back on the very same post that had made him flee to Sherlock’s bed.

While re-reading it, John was relieved that bubblenox wasn’t anyone he knew. That the woman at Rosewood hadn’t been anyone he had ever discussed, anyone he had offered support around or helped rant about. He didn’t know her story, her eating patterns or her struggles, like he did with many others and, right now, that felt good. He knew one thing though, he knew how she’d died and he felt like he should tell her family if they thought it would bring some peace. Especially since the answer was ‘no’, Micha hadn’t suffered.

“Right,” he mumbled, wetting his lips, and started to type up a comment.

_I’m very sorry for your loss._

But then, what? He couldn’t very well admit to having seen her and just about been a part in the investigation into her suicide. There was no way he would accidentally know about any of it. The images of Micha came crashing down on him again, but he managed to put them out of his mind.

_I’m a GP and a former army doctor. If you really want to know what happened in her body when she died and whether she suffered or not, I can probably answer that for you. If you do, feel free to PM me her cause of death. I promise that I won’t spread the information further._

_My deepest sympathies go out to you.  
Dr H_

He read through the comment twice before deciding to send it as PM straight away. He sighed and leaned back in his chair. It was done. Now all he could do was to wait and see if bubblenox actually wanted an answer or not. He cleared his browser history out of well-established habit before getting up and putting on his jacket; he needed to get out, go for a walk, shake this off, before he needed to go back to the surgery and interact with people in the physical world.


	5. Chapter 5

Something was wrong.

John chewed on his thumbnail, and read the forum entry a fourth time, because it couldn’t be right. The content was totally unambiguous though: ninja_rose’s sister had killed herself with insulin.

This was the fifteenth evening he had brought his laptop with him to bed. It had taken bubblenox eight days to get back to him and take him up on his offer. While he had waited, he had started to go through the other entries in the forum’s grief section to see if there were others with similar requests, and he had continued with it even after his correspondence with bubblenox ended.

It had become like being on a case – a morbid excuse to not having to deal with his feelings and personal chaos. It wasn’t very uplifting, but it was a way to channel his anxiety and it was far easier than to write an entry of his own. That was his real motivation, if he was completely honest. If he happened to bring comfort to someone, then that was just a bonus.

The day before bubblenox had written him back, he had found another girl who had died of an insulin overdose. He hadn’t thought much about it at the time, more than noting that it was a strange coincidence, but now suddenly there was a third one. Three women over the course of six months didn’t seem like an accident. Once is chance, twice is a coincidence, third time is a pattern. But a pattern of what? It didn’t make any sense. Most people didn’t even know that it was possible to kill yourself with insulin; even fewer should have both knowledge and means. 

John wondered what Sherlock would say about it, but before he had even finished the thought he pushed it away. This had nothing to do with Sherlock. It wasn’t a case, it was just his macabre pastime, and an unhealthy way to deal with – or rather _not_ deal with – this. 

He should probably stop.

He definitely should stop.

He took a screenshot of ninja_rose’s post, not completely sure of his motives, and saved it. Then he went back and did the same for the other two. In bubblenox’s case he also took screenshots of their PM conversation. After that he cleared his browser history and put the laptop under his bed, as if he actually believed ‘Out of Sight, Out of Mind’ would work in this case.

* * *

Five.

Five women who had killed themselves with insulin.

John didn’t know what to think anymore. The last one, which theoretically was the first one since he had been working backwards, had killed herself eight months ago. Five women in eight months. One case during his almost twenty years as a doctor, and now five in less than a year. It couldn’t be a coincidence. It also couldn’t be a spontaneous trend, like all those kids jumping in front of the Tube some years ago, because where did they get the insulin? It really didn’t add up. John had spent a lot of time trying to discredit his hypothesis that this was, at best, medically assisted suicide or, at worst, murder. However, the only thing he had been able to establish was that none of the dead women had had easy access to insulin.

If this was what he thought it was, then it was a case worthy of Sherlock Holmes. On the other hand, he had worked so hard, for such a long time, to keep the forum’s existence from Sherlock. It was his safe space, the only place where he put himself first, and he was ashamed for needing it to stay that way as much as he did. He couldn’t keep ignoring what was happening, though, because something was clearly wrong in his community.

Now John was standing in the door to Sherlock’s bedroom, like something out of a horror movie. The room was dark, but John could make out the silhouette of Sherlock on the bed; he was asleep, curled up with his back to the door. John could imagine his hands folded in front of his face. Sherlock was there, he was healthy and he felt safe. As far as John could tell, he had stopped force feeding himself. He wasn’t back to the equilibrium and the balance he’d had before the Rosewood suicide five weeks ago, but he was getting there. It felt insane to jeopardise it, even at the cost of other people’s lives.

There was no way he could risk Sherlock’s health or give up the forum. It had to be a mistake. No matter what he thought he saw, it must be a coincidence.

It had to be.

* * *

John stared at the forum. He had done little else since they had settled down in the sitting room for the evening. The once so comforting website just filled him with shame these days, but he kept staring at it in hope of getting an answer. Or a way out. 

Every now and then he refreshed the page. Nothing happened, there hadn’t been an update since late last night. After each time he hit refresh he looked over at Sherlock who was working at the table, typing up some notes he had brought with him from Bart’s the other day. It was such an ordinary sight, so mundane, so… boring. It was routine. It was, as Mrs Hudson would put it, domestic. It wasn’t at all perfect, but it was peaceful.

Sherlock mumbled some numbers to himself, scratching something in his notebook. John looked at him yet again, thinking like so many times these last days, that he was one of the lucky ones to still have Sherlock. With that in mind, he closed his laptop before he could change his mind again.

“Sherlock?”

“Mm?” Sherlock didn’t bother looking up.

“Are you okay?”

The question gave him Sherlock’s full attention in a fraction of a second in a way that John interpreted as: ‘No, but you shouldn’t notice that’. He immediately regretted saying anything.

Sherlock studied him for a moment before saying: “Yes.”

“Are you really, though?”

“What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“John.” There was a sharpness in Sherlock’s voice, and he narrowed his eyes.

“All right, fine. Do you…” John hesitated one last time. “Do you remember the woman at the Rosewood Hotel?”

“Vividly,” Sherlock said dryly.

“See, I don’t think it was suicide.”

Sherlock frowned. “But it was. The insulin was self-administered and Lestrade’s lot found a note.”

“Yes, technically—“

“What other types of suicide are there?”

“Jeff Hope.”

Sherlock’s eyes grew wide, a hint of a smile suddenly appeared at the corner of his lips. John felt somewhat disturbed by how thrilling the idea of another serial suicide seemed to Sherlock.

“What’s your theory?” Sherlock asked.

“Aren’t you the one who’s always on about not theorising before knowing all the facts?”

“Yes, and that’s why I think you have most, if not all, of the facts before you decided to tell me. And what other reason would you have to bring her up?”

There was something in the way he said the last part that made John think that Sherlock wanted him to drop it. The hinted smile remained, though, coxing John to keep going.

“First, promise me you’re okay.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “I’m okay, Dr Watson.”

“I’m serious, Sherlock,” said John, much harsher than he had intended. “If you’re not okay, this can wait.”

“You’re going to let a potential serial killer run around London because you don’t like my tone?”

“Yes.”

Sherlock sat up straighter, blinking. It made John smile, even if Sherlock’s surprise at what was the most natural thing in the world to him made his heart break a little.

“Of course I would,” John said. “You come first. Your recovery – your health – comes first. Always. If this is what I think it is, then it will still be around when you’re sure you’re okay. So I ask again: are you okay?”

Sherlock nodded. “Tell me your theory.”

“Right.” John wet his lips again. “You said yourself that the woman at Rosewood wasn’t diabetic. Judging by her age and… condition” – Sherlock made a face – “I doubt that she had a profession where she could get her hands on the amount of insulin that she had brought with her.”

“She could have obtained it from a friend or—“

“I know she didn’t,” John interrupted.

Sherlock raised his eyebrows in surprise. “How?”

“That’s… not the point right now,” John said, shaking his head. “The point is that I know of four other women with severe eating disorders who committed suicide in the same way during the last year and, as far as I can tell, none of them had any reason to have any insulin at all on hand.”

Sherlock had put his hands together in front of his mouth while John talked. There was poorly hidden excitement in his eyes that John pretended he didn’t see as he went on:

“I think this is an Angel of Death who targets women, or people, with eating disorders. I don’t know how or why, but I’m fairly certain someone’s doing it.”

“How do you know all this?”

John met his eyes; this was it. “Through an online support group for people who live with someone suffering from an eating disorder.”

Sherlock blinked; all the enthusiasm about the possible case disappeared. It was painful to watch, but John kept his gaze steady as Sherlock realised the implications of what John had just said.

“John,” Sherlock said, his voice strained. “Are you coming to me as a client?”

“Yes. In a way, I am.”

“You know these people.”

“Not the dead women, but…“

“But the people on the forum.”

John nodded.

Sherlock took a deep breath, closing his eyes. When he looked back at John, his eyes were blank and his voice trembled slightly when he asked: “What have you told them?”

“A lot,” John said, but added quickly. “But they don’t know our names. They don’t know who you are or what you do.”

“You haven’t…”

“…talked to them about this?” John shook his head. “No.”

“I see,” Sherlock mumbled. The reassurance seemed to calm him, but John still waited for Sherlock to snap at him. It didn’t happen. Instead Sherlock just sat there, looking more and more like a confused and lost child for every second that passed.

“Sherlock?” John said after nearly two minutes of silence.

“I’m okay,” Sherlock muttered, probably more to himself than to John. Then he cleared his throat and met John’s eyes. “I’m okay,” he said. “But I won’t take this case.”

John exhaled slowly, feeling both incredibly relieved and incredibly disappointed at the same time. 

“Okay,” he said, making sure to put up a smile. “Good.”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes, studying him closely for a moment. 

“Good,” he then said, not sounding entirely convinced, but went back to his notes anyway.

John closed his eyes as soon as Sherlock’s gaze was off him, curling his hands into fists in his lap. He hadn’t noticed before now how much they were shaking. Hopefully Sherlock hadn’t noticed it either.


	6. Chapter 6

Sherlock was sitting at the kitchen table with John's computer, when John got up the next morning. He was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, which meant that he probably hadn’t even tried to sleep. John didn’t comment, on that or on the computer, but he suddenly felt extremely guilty for fleeing the sitting room last night after their conversation.

“Do you want toast and tea?” he asked as he popped bread in the toaster.

“’I found a toothbrush at the back of the pantry yesterday.’”

John froze momentarily, before turning around. “What?”

Sherlock didn’t look up; instead, he kept on reading from the screen: “’It’s mine. I had forgotten that I kept it there, but there it still was. It’s red.’”

John’s heart sank to his stomach when he recognised what Sherlock was reading, and figured out what was going on. Sherlock was reading aloud from an entry John had posted on _LovED Ones_ about three years ago.

“’I started to keep a toothbrush in the kitchen around the time I discovered that he sometimes used toothbrushes to purge. I don’t think he ever used mine’ – I didn’t, by the way,” Sherlock added, pausing just long enough to give John a dark glare before he went back to reading. “‘It was more about not having to go into the bathroom, because some days I couldn’t bring myself to set my foot in there. Anyway, my first instinct when I found the toothbrush was to throw it away, because we don’t really have a bathroom problem these days’—”

“Sherlock…”

“—‘but I didn’t. I couldn’t make myself get rid of it. I know it’s ridiculous, but I just couldn’t. We’ve reached this point before, more than once, and then something happens and we’re back at square -5 again. For example, two weeks ago he began a new breakfast routine that I still don’t follow, and can’t seem to break. So who knows how long it’ll stay this way? (I’m really starting to believe that full recovery is this mystical creature that lives in Narnia.)’”

“Please, stop reading.”

“No, this is the best part,” Sherlock said, looking up and nailing John down with his eyes, reciting the rest of the entry from memory. “’I don’t trust him. So I’m keeping a toothbrush in the pantry, even though all I really want to do is scream at him to just eat breakfast like a normal human being.’”

“Are you done?”

Sherlock’s gaze was absolutely crushing. “You’ve written 194 entries, and I’ve only been at this since this morning, what do you think?”

“That’s not…” John closed his eyes, flexing his fingers, and took a deep breath in an attempt to stay calm. “Do you want to… talk about it?”

“About what? That you don’t trust me or the fact that you have told these people everything but my shoe size?” At the end Sherlock was practically yelling.

“I haven’t—“

Sherlock turned back to the computer to read aloud again. “’It was as if he had scooped the water right out of the Dead Sea. He’s making it completely inedible. I don’t see the point of it. Does he think I don’t notice? I’m trying to eat it too!’”

“Stop it.”

“What about this, then: ’He’s a former addict (I use the term “former” very loosely) and I suspect the drug use and the ED comes from the same place.’”

“Sherlock!”

“I really like this one: ‘We were working on a project earlier this week that really took its toll. I made the decision to ask this client, one of his regulars, to not call S’—“

“Shut up!”

“You were the one who took the work from me!” Sherlock slammed his hands down on either side of the computer, making everything on the table jump.

“ _You_ took it from you.”

“You talked to Lestrade!”

“Of course I did! You collapsed during that case, Sherlock.”

“You had no right—“

“I had every right!” John yelled. “You should never have taken the case to begin with, let alone kept at it after that!”

“It was _fine_.”

“I found you unconscious on the bloody floor! Literally! Do you have any idea what that was like?” 

“No, but luckily, I’ve read up on it.”

John’s entire body trembled under the strain of trying to keep at least some of his composure. “ _You_ don’t get to be upset here.”

“I _don’t_?” Sherlock looked highly insulted.

“No.”

“You’ve told people what I eat.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve told people what I _eat_!”

“Yes! And I won’t apologise for it, because it’s the only thing that has stopped me from going crazy!”

“But you’ve _told_ people what I eat…”

“They don’t care!” John screamed, his voice starting to go hoarse.

“Then why did you tell them?” yelled Sherlock.

“Because _I_ care!”

“You still can’t tell people this!”

John pointed at his computer, shaking now. “That’s my life, Sherlock. That’s what you’ve made my life. It’s all I know, and I have the right to talk about it!”

“No one asked you to stay.”

“I can’t leave! I don’t _want_ to leave! I just want you to get over yourself and eat like a sane person!”

Sherlock blinked once, and time seemed to come to a sudden halt. The kitchen was completely quiet, saved their winded breathing. They stared at each other, the anger slowly draining away until nothing of it was left in either of them.

“The kettle has boiled,” said John after a far too long silence. “Do you want some tea?”

“No,” Sherlock mumbled, getting up from the table. “Give it to a sane person.”

“Sherlock, please don’t…” John said, but Sherlock was already on his way down the stairs.

John closed his eyes and cursed under his breath. A part of him wanted to run after Sherlock while another part – the bigger part, actually – never wanted to see him again. He turned around to make his own tea and saw that his toast had popped up. With anger boiling up in him again, he took the now cold toast and threw it across the kitchen, screaming wordlessly in frustration.

This was so not good.

* * *

It was Vivaldi.

Maybe.

John was almost sure of it. It was a long time since he had been woken in the middle of the night by Sherlock playing. Right now he couldn’t even remember the last time. He wished he could say that it was tonight, but he hadn’t been able to fall asleep at all. In recent years Sherlock had solved his insomnia by coming to John’s bed instead. It wasn’t surprising that he opted for something else tonight and, truth be told, John wasn’t sure he would let him come here right now. 

It didn’t make any it easier to listen to.

It was definitely probably Vivaldi. John tried to remember the name of the melody, but it was over before he had a chance. The silence lasted for as long as it took to take a breath. It was a different melody, same tempo. John thought that it was still Vivaldi, but he had to admit that at this point he was just guessing.

They had made a splendid job avoiding each other the entire day; John at work, and Sherlock… somewhere. John didn’t even know when Sherlock had come back home. If he hadn’t still been upset, if he had trusted either of them to not pick up the argument again, he would have gone downstairs. Now he turned on his side, pressing one of his pillows against his ear to keep the sound out.

After what felt like an eternity – though the alarm clock told him it was just close to a half hour – he removed the pillow. The flat was once again quiet. John rolled over on his back and closed his eyes, guilt tearing through every fibre of his being, making him nauseous.

When the alarm rang four hours later he hadn’t slept at all.


	7. Chapter 7

“Oh, dear! You’re soaking wet,” Mrs Hudson said as she opened the front door after John had banged at it for about a minute. “Why didn’t you let yourself in?”

“I left my keys at work,” John muttered, stepping in from the pouring rain. He took off his jacket while still downstairs to not drag too much water into the flat. Just as he was about to hang it on the hook, he saw that Sherlock’s coat was hanging there as well.

“Sherlock’s home?” he asked.

“I think so.”

John sighed, his intestines twisting into a knot as he glanced up the stairs. They had kept avoiding each other; they hadn’t said a word to each other in three days. John had even picked up an extra shift, and worked overtime just to not have to be in the flat. Sherlock seemed to have had similar ideas, because they had been pretty good at missing each other. 

Until now. 

There was always the chance that Sherlock had locked himself in his room, but seeing how John’s day was coming along he wouldn’t bet on it.

“John.” Mrs Hudson put a hand on his arm, ever so lightly. “I heard you the other day. How are… things?”

He smiled ruefully. Her intonation made it obvious what she was referring to, and he was genuinely grateful both that she knew and that she cared enough to ask.

“I don’t know,” he said. “He’s not— It’s not good, but it’s not bad either.”

She patted his arm. “Don’t forget your keys tomorrow.”

“I won’t,” he said. “Thank you, Mrs Hudson.”

She smiled sympathetically, before going back to her flat. John squared his shoulders, heading up the stairs as he prepared to face Sherlock. He had been absolutely miserable the last three days, regretting every word he’d said in anger, but he wasn’t over how violated he felt that Sherlock had gone through the forum. The mere thought of it still made him tense.

Sherlock was lying on the sofa, perfectly still, with his computer open on the coffee table, almost tauntingly showing John’s profile on _LovED Ones_. If it was meant as a provocation it was definitely working. John felt his pulse rise, and he was on the verge of leaving again.

But it was raining outside.

And he had trouble enough sleeping as it was.

John sighed. “Why do you keep reading that?”

“Why do you think?”

John shut his eyes, willing himself to stay calm. He walked over to the sofa, closing the open laptop so that he at least wouldn’t have to see it.

“Sherlock, can we talk—“

“It’s not important,” Sherlock interrupted, suddenly sitting up. He opened the computer again and started to click away from John’s profile. John slammed the laptop shut, almost hitting Sherlock’s fingers.

Sherlock blinked in surprise, putting his hands back down on top of the computer, but he made no move to open it again.

“Stop reading,” John said sternly. “It’s not for you.”

Sherlock met his eyes. “Another woman has died.”

“You shouldn’t be reading this.”

“Yes, we’ve established that,” said Sherlock, annoyed. “Can we perhaps move along?”

John exhaled _very_ slowly. “Fine. Someone’s dead. Who?”

“The person Sai28 refers to as Mymble.”

John had to brace himself against the armrest of the sofa at the news. “She- she killed herself?”

“No, it was a heart attack two days ago.” Sherlock opened the computer again, and with a couple of clicks he was in John’s inbox, turning the computer around for John to see. “Sai28 sent you a PM just before lunch.”

“He sent me a… hm… You read…” John couldn’t form a proper thought. He flexed his fingers, staring at the message Sherlock was showing him. It didn’t say much, nothing more than that Sai’s fiancée had died of a heart attack the day before yesterday. John had spent hours talking to Sai about Mymble. He still didn’t know exactly how old Mymble had been, but he knew she was far too young to die of a heart attack, had she been healthy. That was far more disturbing than the fact that Sherlock read his private messages on the forum.

At least it should be.

“John?”

“No,” was all John managed to say. He held up both hands, still staring at the computer screen, and took a step back. His vision started to close in on him; he felt like someone had pulled the rug out from under him and he had fallen smack down on the floor. Sherlock reading his correspondence wasn’t new, so why did this feel that much worse than other times? He had known this was a risk when he told him. 

He rubbed his face, taking a couple of deep breaths that made him more dizzy than calm, before he was able to look at Sherlock again.

“You can’t do this,” he said with poorly acted composure. “I don’t… Sherlock, you cannot—“

“I wasn’t planning to read your messages,” Sherlock said. “I promise. This is the only one I’ve read.”

“Why did you?”

“The notification came while I was reading… other things. I recognised the sender from your comment discussions, and I saw the title.”

John nodded slowly. He didn’t know if he believed him, but right now he didn’t dare not to, because this couldn’t turn into another fight. Not now. He closed his eyes, trying to focus on the other thing that had his head spinning at the moment: a woman he sort of knew was dead, and one of his friends was reaching out to him. He should be able to put his and Sherlock’s issues aside for a moment.

“I think you’re right.”

John jumped at the sound of Sherlock’s voice. “What?”

“The Angel of Death,” said Sherlock. “I think your theory is correct. I think someone’s supplying these people with the insulin, and perhaps even coaching them to suicide.”

John sighed. “I really hoped that I was just seeing things.”

“The thing is,” Sherlock said, turning on the sofa so that he was facing John straight on, “the large number of victims in such a small population can only mean one of two things; either there are a lot of other victims that haven’t been discovered yet, or – and I actually hope this is the case – the killer is a member of the forum.”

“No,” John said, shaking his head. “That’s not… No.”

“The thought must have crossed your mind.”

John shook his head more fiercely, not because Sherlock wasn’t right, but because he didn’t want to think about it. The possibility that someone used his safe space as a hunting ground, that seeking comfort there might have endangered Sherlock? He had willingly chosen to ignore that, because he couldn’t bear to face it.

“If I were to kill myself I’d use heroin, not insulin,” Sherlock said, as if he had read his mind.

John chuckled, joylessly. “Is that supposed to calm me down?”

“Yes.”

John shook his head yet again, smiling this time. It was strange, but right now it actually did make him feel better.

Sherlock smiled too for a brief moment. “I’m going to take the case.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Sherlock sounded determined, but he looked down at his hands. “This is hard enough without someone encouraging you to kill yourself.”

John’s heart dropped to his toes. He swallowed hard. “You know I don’t wish you to die, right?”

Sherlock nodded.

“I’m serious, Sherlock, I don’t. I have never wished that. Not ever, not really, no matter what you’ve read.”

Sherlock looked up at him again. He sighed. “I know.”

“The, the first time I did,” John began, wetting his lips. “Or the first time I said I did, Sai gave me his phone number, because he knew I would hate myself for weeks.”

“Did you?”

“I still hate myself for that.”

“Call him, I mean.”

“No,” John said. “As stupid as it might sound, I was afraid that if he got my number, or heard my voice, he could figure out that it was you I was talking about.”

“You want to call him now.”

John nodded, and said, practically inaudible: “His you just died.”

For a moment John thought Sherlock was trying to read him, but then he realised that he wasn’t really looking at him at all anymore. After what appeared to have been a difficult internal debate Sherlock said:

“Call him.”

“You sure?” John asked, air getting stuck in his throat.

“Yes,” Sherlock said, taking out his phone as he got off the sofa. “Use my phone. The number is unlisted, but beyond that… He knows me more intimately than I’d prefer anyway, so...”

John ignored the last part, and took his hand as Sherlock gave him the phone. “Thank you.”

“If I were to…” Sherlock trailed off, looking at their joined hands. “I would want one of these people to call you.”

“Thank you,” John said again. “And I really, _really_ don’t wish you dead. Okay?”

Sherlock met his eyes, suddenly seeming exhausted. “I’ve wished us both dead on multiple occasions.”

“Christ, Sherlock. I’m sorry.”

“Very little of this is your fault,” Sherlock said, letting go of John, and walking to his bedroom.

When John heard the door close, he sat down at the computer to find Sai28’s phone number again. As he listened to the call going through, he wondered what on earth possessed him to do this, but when he heard a man’s voice from the other side of the line, it felt like the only good decision he had made this week.

“ _Hello?_ ”

“Is this Sai28?” he asked.

“ _Yes, who is this?_ ”

“It’s Dr H, I just read your PM...”

* * *

When John hung up he felt completely and utterly drained. That had been absolutely horrible. The call had lasted for 23 minutes and 19 seconds, according to the phone, but it could just as well have been hours. Sai28 had burst into tears as soon as John had said who he was, and John hadn’t done much more than listen to him cry.

With a sigh, John heaved himself off the sofa. For a long time he stood in kitchen, just looking at Sherlock’s closed door. A big part of him wanted to go in there and make sure that he was all right, that he was still with him, still alive. The rest of him was still afraid they’d start arguing again. He was unsure of his footing, and not ready to confront just how much it hurt that Sherlock had read what he had.

The latter part won.

He filled the kettle with new water and put it on, ignoring how unsteady his hands were. Before the water boiled, he heard Sherlock’s door open. He closed his eyes momentarily, sighing in relief, strangely enough.

“How did it go?” Sherlock asked.

“Fine,” John mumbled. He looked over his shoulder. “I’m making— Do you want…?”

“Please.”

John took out mugs for them and fumbled with the teabags. He struggled with himself before asking: “Sugar?”

He poured hot water in the mugs while he waited for a response. When he didn’t get one he turned around. “Sherlock?”

Sherlock breathed out slowly, shaking his head after a moment of hesitation. John wasn’t surprised; he had suspected it, and that’s why he had asked. He took his mug, stepping aside to let Sherlock come and take his own. They both leaned back against the counter, looking straight ahead at the opposite wall in silence.

“How much have you read?” John finally asked.

“Enough.”

John sighed.

“I’ve read all your entries, and all comments on those entries,” Sherlock started to clarify. “From there I identified some of your more frequent contacts – that’s how I found Sai28 – and read through most of their entries, and your comment threads on those as well.”

John had his eyes closed when he listened, his teeth clenched together. It wasn’t that shocking, it was even expected, but hearing it made his blood boil again.

“No messages?” he asked.

“Only the one today.”

“Okay.”

They both sighed, keeping their eyes fixed on arbitrary points ahead. Sherlock tried his tea; John didn’t see it, but he could imagine the dissatisfied twist in the corner of Sherlock’s lips at the first sip of unsweetened tea. John didn’t bother with his own, he had no appearance to keep up and he didn’t feel like having tea anymore. It was nice having something in his hands, though; it made it easier to keep calm.

“You can’t tell them what I eat,” said Sherlock after another long silence.

John shook his head. “They don’t care what you eat.”

“That’s not the point.”

“What’s the point, then?”

Sherlock didn’t answer. John looked to him, ready to ask him again, but Sherlock’s hard-set jaw made him drop it. He put the tea down on the counter, and cleared his throat. 

“Sherlock, this case…”

“I’m taking it.”

“You’re having tea without sugar and we haven’t even started yet.”

Sherlock turned to face him, narrowing his eyes. “Three of the supposed victims, bubblenox’s and adasm967’s daughters and ninja_rose’s sister, all lived on their own in the Greater London area. Two of the victims had gone through cognitive behavioural therapy without lasting improvements within the last five months leading up to their suicide. One of them – SoTired’s girlfriend – hadn’t had any type of treatment and the remaining two had tried at least four different types of therapy and treatment. ninja_rose’s sister even was _in_ interpersonal psychotherapy when she committed suicide.” Sherlock stopped to breathe, continuing much more slowly. “I didn’t read the forum to find out how many times you’ve wanted to ‘stuff toast down my throat’. I looked into your theory and I started the case, because this really _is_ hard enough without someone telling you to commit suicide.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Okay,” John said, nodding, even as a bad feeling rose in his chest. “Then I have another couple of messages that I think you need to read.”

“Show me,” Sherlock said, nodding as well, and sounding very determined.

John could see a small spark of excitement in his eyes. It was the most reassuring thing John could have wished for.


	8. Chapter 8

“Sherlock, I think I’ve got something.”

Sherlock came over to the table, leaning over John’s shoulder to read the blog that John had open on his laptop. They had been working on the case for four days now, and they had got virtually nowhere. Sherlock had tried to further track down the identities of the women John had already found, but since he refused to look into the death of the woman at the Rosewood Hotel, he hadn’t got very far. With the help of the forum entries, he had been able to pin point one more of the women to the Greater London area, but that was about it.

John, for his part, had tried to find out where the insulin might have come from, but he’d had even less luck than Sherlock since the possible search area right now was ‘the world’. He, too, kept his distance from Micha, since there were no obvious reasons for him to ask Lestrade to see reports on a suicide. Instead he had started working on finding other victims, partly in hopes of discrediting the idea that the perpetrator was someone on _LovED Ones_ and now, finally, he thought he had found something.

It was a personal blog, a twenty-something woman’s detailed description of her fight against calories and pounds. The latest post, posted five months ago, was written by the woman’s girlfriend, who had found her dead in their shared flat. According to the girlfriend, it was suicide by insulin. At the end of the post was also a big ‘Fuck You’ to everyone who had visited the blog, and encouraged the girlfriend’s disorder.

John watched Sherlock’s profile as he read the blog post; he didn’t look the least bit tired and his breath smelled of toast and strawberry jam. It eased John’s worries about this case, but when Sherlock reached for the touchpad to scroll down, he still stopped him by grabbing his hand. Sherlock looked at him, confused.

“You don’t want to see the rest of it,” John said, not letting go of his hand. Sherlock’s eyes darted to the address field, but John quickly had his free hand up on the screen and covered the URL.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Sherlock. “If I’m to investigate this properly and be able to track her down I need to—“

“I’ll do it.”

Sherlock huffed.

“I’m serious,” John said. “I’ll take screenshots and show you some of the text posts, but I won’t have you on this blog if I can help it.”

“Oh, please,” Sherlock said condescendingly.

“You don’t have anything to prove by looking at it,” John said, still stubbornly holding a hand at the computer screen.

“ _I’m_ not the one trying to prove something with this blog,” said Sherlock, vaguely annoyed. He straightened up and pulled his hand away from John. “If the killer is someone on your precious forum, denying me access to a blog is not going to change that.”

“I know, but—“

“You have to give me some credit, and not believe that I would fall for whatever ruse this man is using.”

“Because you’d use heroin, anyway,” John muttered.

“Yes, and because I don’t want to die!”

John felt his ears turning red, embarrassed by how much that statement surprised him. It felt incredibly good to hear, and he was just barely able to contain the smile that the reassurance prompted.

“The killer is not why I don’t want you on this blog,” John said. “Some of the posts are rather… encouraging.”

“You think that after reading about my own restriction habits and purging techniques for a week, _this_ is what’s going to push me over the edge?”

“Sherlock.”

“I don’t need you to protect me. I’ve been dealing with this _a lot_ longer than you have.”

“I’ll cross-reference what I find on her with what we got off the forum to see if she’s actually a new one,” John said. “If she is, then okay, but if she isn’t… can you promise me to not go there?”

Sherlock snorted. “You know, at some point you have to trust me with my own life.”

“Believe me, there’s nothing I’d want more,” said John. “But right now, I promise me that you won’t look at this blog until I’ve made absolutely sure there’s a good reason for you to do so.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, but when he spoke he sounded very collected: “Fine. I promise to not do anything that can be even remotely productive until you’ve confirmed what you already know, if it makes you feel better.”

“It does,” John said, reaching out to take Sherlock’s hand again. He squeezed it lightly, finally removing his other hand from the computer screen. Sherlock’s eyes darted there right away, but other than that he didn’t move a muscle.

“This is your issue, John, not mine,” he said when he met John’s eyes again. 

“Yeah, I know.”

“Tell me when you’re ready,” Sherlock said, nodding once before he went back to trying to find markers on the one victim from the forum that he hadn’t placed geographically yet.

John closed his eyes. He knew Sherlock was right; he knew this was a new victim, and that the best way to get to the bottom of this was to let Sherlock study all the evidence. No matter how he rationalised it, though, he wasn’t sure he could ever get to a place where he would be comfortable showing Sherlock a blog called _Thin Actually_.

* * *

Sherlock tilted his head, looking at the contents of the fridge. It was surprisingly full. He felt a disproportionate amount of pride every time he opened the fridge and it wasn’t empty, even if he knew it was John who should have most of the credit. John had gone to bed hours ago, since he apparently had an early shift at the surgery tomorrow. He had urged Sherlock to do the same, but Sherlock was too restless to even think about going to bed.

Hence, the fridge.

It felt like he had been eating constantly since he took this case, primarily to keep John calm, but he was still hungry, and falling behind on his calories. Not to mention that the blog John had found earlier, and _finally_ had allowed him to go through, had stirred up a lot of memories. Mostly bad ones, but he felt a disturbing nostalgia about a lot of what he had read.

Apple cider vinegar, ice cubes, prune juice.

Caffeine, nicotine, cayenne pepper pills.

Distance, Distraction, Delay, Decision.

With huge determination, he began rearranging the items in the fridge; the dairies up top, perishable in the pull-out at the bottom, bottles in alphabetical order in the door, jams and other sweet things at the first shelf, meat, eggs and other proteins on the second shelf. When he was done, he closed the door.

His hand rested on the handle. That… wasn’t what he had planned to do. He needed to eat something. He needed to prove to himself that eating after nightfall really wasn’t a problem. That he was past all of that. With a sigh, he opened the fridge again. There were perishables in there, he should do something with them before they went bad. That was a good start. Vegetables and fruit always felt safe.

Sherlock closed the door again without taking anything out. He didn’t need safe food because he wasn’t ill. He was, well, he hadn’t been fine in years but he was okay. He was. He was okay, and he did not need safe food.

He didn’t.

Because he was okay.

He opened the fridge for the third time. Dairy products. Milk for the tea, cream for the tomato soup, cheese…. Sherlock frowned. He loathed cheese. How could cheese be allowed to take up space in _his_ fridge? There couldn’t be cheese in his fridge!

Holding his breath, Sherlock reached in, took the terrible thing out, and tossed it in the bin under the sink. The door to the fridge had slid shut again and he had to open it for the fourth time. His stomach had turned into a hard knot by now. He knew this was becoming ridiculous, but he just stared at the food.

Not vegetables, because he didn’t need safe food.

Not meat, because it was past 9 o’clock.

Definitely not the left-overs. It had been bad enough to eat that yesterday in the first place.

Eggs. Eggs were good, about seventy calories, a fair amount of proteins. He was growing increasingly tired of the taste, though.

Yoghurt? Sweet but small. It had a good amount of calories, but it wouldn’t fill him up; he would still be hungry, and he couldn’t allow that. He had to stop being hungry, because it felt just a little bit too good.

In the end, Sherlock concluded that there was no food in the fridge that he could eat. Therefore, he closed it and backed away until he hit the table. 

He looked around the kitchen, drumming his fingers against the table. Did he have beans? And bread? With that much in the fridge (though all of it useless!) there had to be at least something in the pantry. 

Besides John’s emergency toothbrush…

Sherlock opened the pantry – which was acceptably full – and started looking for the toothbrush. It wasn’t there; he couldn’t find it. He couldn’t tell if John had stopped keeping an emergency toothbrush all together since he had written that forum entry, or if he, in light of recent events, just had moved it someplace else. Either way, Sherlock found the lack of toothbrushes in the pantry comforting, even encouraging. 

With that, he took out a can of beans and some bread, feeling much more at peace than he had in days. As he went through the drawers to find a can-opener, he also efficiently managed to ignore the small alarm bells that had been ringing in the back of his head for the last three days. It was easier than it should be. He would most likely be able to fill his calorie quota today, and that was what mattered right now.

* * *

When John woke that morning it felt like he had overslept, but his phone told him that it was still forty minutes until the alarm would go off. At first he thought about turning around and getting those last minutes of sleep, but then he heard that Sherlock was moving downstairs. With a grimace John forced himself out of bed.

Sherlock was sitting with his computer at the table, foot on the seat of the chair, absently stroking his shoulder. He looked up when John came downstairs. “I didn’t hear your alarm.”

“It’s not seven yet.”

Sherlock glanced down at the computer clock. “Right,” he said, rubbing his face with one hand. “I put the kettle on some time ago, but I forgot to actually make the tea. It’s probably still warm.”

“Thanks,” John said, half-chuckling. “Do you want me to make you some?”

“Sure,” Sherlock muttered, already with his focus back on the computer.

In the kitchen John found a half-eaten toast with beans next to the stone-cold kettle. He gave Sherlock a quick glance, before refilling the kettle and putting it on. He considered putting sugar in Sherlock’s tea, but in the end he decided that he better not.

“How long have you been up?” John asked when he came back with their tea.

“Never went to bed,” Sherlock mumbled, accepting the mug without as much as looking at John. He wrapped his fingers around the mug and inhaled the scent of the tea.

John just sighed.

“When I was going through the blog yesterday,” Sherlock began, looking at the screen with an unfocused gaze. “It occurred to me that if you were to seek out people to kill, or ‘save’ or whatever it is he thinks he does, it would be idiotic to do so through the people who are actually trying to protect them. Freya, the girl behind _Thin Actually_ , had been active on a couple of forums, and most of the traffic on her blog seems to have come from there – both her posts, and the comments refer back to at least three different communities.”

He paused for a moment to have a sip of tea; if he noticed how John stared at him, he didn’t let on. He just cleared his throat and continued.

“Anyway, I realised that it would be far more likely that venues like these were his hunting ground, rather than forums such as yours. So I went to the one Freya talked about most frequently, and created an account. It took some time before I found her there, because obviously she used a different username there than on her blog, and there was just so much other…”

Sherlock trailed off. Then he shook his head, blinking rapidly twice, as to wake himself up again or to pull himself back to here and now. For the first time he looked straight at John, who by now was pale as a ghost.

“I found Micha. She called herself mosquitobite, and she talked about how she booked the room at the Rosewood Hotel. She even had someone edit her suicide note — which was just as well, she had terrible grammar. This isn’t where our Angel of Death contacted her, or Freya, if it wasn’t done through some PM system I haven’t figured out yet. Either way, I can’t access their inboxes. However, Micha’s posts do refer to a man in association with this plan, so at least our statistical assumption that the killer is a man is correct. And that there actually is one, for that matter.”

John kept staring at him, gaping in disgusted shock. “You—you’ve spent the night combing through pro-ana forums?”

“ _Forum_ , but yes, the last… five hours, or so.”

“How do you… Are you okay?”

“I am,” Sherlock said, putting on a smile. It was a default smile, John would recognise it from miles away, but there still was an excited spark in his eyes. John just stood there, blinking. He didn’t know what to think or where to turn. In theory, this was all good news, they were finally getting somewhere, but John couldn’t shake the image of Sherlock wading through page after page of... _that_. And creating a goddamn account!

“John.” Sherlock snapped his fingers in his face. “I’m okay. I’ve found a link between two of the victims, and I’m feeling rather confident that I’ll find the others, either here or on other sites like this. If nothing else, this exonerates the users of _LovED Ones_.”

It took an insane amount of willpower, but John managed to smile. It probably wasn’t even half as convincing as Sherlock’s, but Sherlock had already turned his attention back to the computer.

Just as John was about to leave the room to get ready for work Sherlock muttered: “I told you that you didn’t put me in danger.”

John looked back over his shoulder; he wasn’t at all sure about that.


	9. Chapter 9

John had been waiting for something ever since Sherlock had said that he would take the case. He didn’t know what that something would be or how it would present itself, but he had been anticipating… something. Especially since he found the cheese in the bin, and their work of going through the seemingly never ending forums advising and encouraging weight loss and starvation had stretched into its second week, without generating much other than more victims.

So when there was a huge crash in the kitchen, John was up from the sofa and heading over there quickly enough to have beaten most Olympic runners up from the starting blocks. He stopped in the doorway. Sherlock was standing next to the stove where he had cooked their dinner, staring blankly at the mess of broken plates, tomato sauce, and pasta that were spread over the kitchen floor.

“What happened?” John asked.

Sherlock looked up, his face grey as ash.

“It’s okay,” said John softly. 

Sherlock shook his head, backing away from the mess he’d made and gracelessly falling down on a chair. He covered his face in his trembling hands.

John looked between the broken kitchenware on the floor, and the quite broken detective on the chair. He felt a surprising relief now that the unknown thing he had been dreading appeared to have happened, and that it wasn’t worse than two broken plates. He got down on the floor and started picking up the shards. 

When he had got rid of the bigger pieces he sat back on his heels.

“Sherlock,” he said, placing a hand on Sherlock’s knee to make him look up from his hands. “A little help?”

Sherlock swallowed, but nodded, and got up to fetch a dish cloth to wipe up the tomato sauce that was splattered all over kitchen. They did the rest of the cleaning up in silence, hardly even looking at each other. As John finally stood up again, Sherlock sat down on the floor, leaning against the cupboard. John smiled briefly, reaching down to help him up, but Sherlock just took his hand, remaining firmly where he was.

“What happened?” John asked again, squeezing Sherlock’s hand.

“I don’t know.”

John recognised the answer as ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ but he chose to ignore it. “You okay?”

“I thought I was,” Sherlock said, letting go of John.

“Sherlock—“

“No, we’re not going to talk about it now.”

“Are we ever?”

“Probably not,” Sherlock half-mumbled, pushing himself up off the floor.

“Sherlock...”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Sherlock turned around, halfway out of the room already, sighing with clearly acted annoyance. “I dropped some plates, what is there to talk about?”

“You know exactly what,” John muttered. He took out new plates and started to put up spaghetti on them. “Do you want food?”

Sherlock didn’t answer, which wasn’t that shocking, but he didn’t leave the kitchen either. That caught John’s attention enough for him to turn around. Sherlock looked incredibly guilty, and the colour that had returned to his cheeks during the cleaning up slowly disappeared again.

“What?” asked John suspiciously, and closed his eyes when Sherlock only answer was to shake his head. “Sherlock, what did you do?”

“I over-salted the pasta water.”

John dropped the pasta spoon into the pot as if it had burned him, and stepped back from the stove. Sherlock hadn't intentionally ruined food for years. The harmless ‘something’ had suddenly become very much not so.

“We’re dropping the case,” he said, turning to Sherlock. “Right now.”

“You’re overreacting. It’s not that—“

“No, Sherlock, this is not a discussion. The case is off.”

“Fifteen dead women,” said Sherlock soberly.

“I don’t care!”

“Yes, you do.”

John deflated, letting out a frustrated sound. Sherlock was right, there were at least fifteen dead women out there and it would be impossible to walk away from that. But he couldn’t walk away from this either. He couldn’t pretend that this hadn’t happened.

“Fine,” he muttered. “Tomorrow we’re handing it over to Lestrade.”

“No.”

“We have enough to prove that there is something to investigate and—“

“It’s my case.”

“If anything it’s _my_ case, and it’s not like we were going to be able to make the arrest ourselves, anyway, if we ever got to that point.”

“I don’t need him!” Sherlock yelled at the top of his lungs. “ _He_ needs _me_!”

“Sherlock?” John held up both his hands, taking a small step forward. “Calm down.”

Sherlock went instantly still.

“You, you can’t tell him,” he said. “John, please.”

John stared at him, his hands fell down; Sherlock was, he was… begging. He was scared and he was begging. John felt completely frozen to the ground.

“He won’t make the connection,” John stuttered. “I won’t say anything—“

“How would you explain how we found the case in the first place?”

“I…” John shook his head, completely at a loss. “I’ll figure something out.”

“John.”

“Yeah, all right,” John mumbled. “I, I won’t take it to him. I promise.”

He sat down on the chair Sherlock had been on earlier, reaching out a hand for Sherlock. “Come.”

Sherlock obeyed, taking John’s hand, but staying at arm’s distance from him. It felt like a stab in the gut to John. All he wanted to do right now was to wrap his arms around Sherlock and hold him close until the feeling of having him slowly slip through his fingers disappeared. Holding on to his hand, squeezing so hard that pain was visible on Sherlock’s face wasn’t even remotely enough, but it made John able to at least force a weary smile.

“You’re going to take other cases,” John said, meeting Sherlock’s eyes to make it clear that it wasn’t negotiable. “I’m going to continue to go through the forums, but you’re not going back on them. Can you promise me that?”

Sherlock averted his eyes.

John tugged his hand gently to make him look back. “I promised to not take it to Lestrade. Now, you promise me. Please?”

“Fine,” Sherlock muttered, wiggling his hand out of John’s. “It’s not necessary, but if it—“

“Sherlock.”

Sherlock sighed. He rubbed his face, stopping with his hands over his eyes. “I really thought I was okay,” he mumbled.

John stood and stepped up to him, gently pulling Sherlock's arms down.

“I’m _so_ sorry, Sherlock,” John whispered. “I never should have—“

“Don’t,” Sherlock said, shaking his head. “If you hadn’t seen the pattern, then it might have taken another sixty victims before anyone put it together. Harold Shipman murdered over two hundred people before anyone noticed.”

“Yeah, well, none of them would have been you.”

Sherlock frowned. “I’m not dead now, either.”

“You’re right, you’re not.” John nodded to make himself listen to that, stroking Sherlock’s arms. “Is there anything I can do right now?”

“You should eat something.”

John half-chuckled. “You too, you know.”

“I will.”

“Good,” said John softly. “Do you want me to make you anything?”

Sherlock shook his head. “I’ll make some egg and toast when you’re done.”

“Okay,” John said, stroking Sherlock’s arms again. “I’ll go and get some takeaway, and stay out of the kitchen for a bit.”

Sherlock let go of a shaky breath. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t mean for this, Sherlock, I’m sorry.”

Sherlock shrugged, failing to smile. “You’re an idiot.”

That was the final straw. John moved closer, slipping his arms around Sherlock without even thinking about it, and buried his face against Sherlock’s chest. It felt so familiar, frighteningly so, and still he couldn’t remember the last time he had hugged Sherlock. When Sherlock didn’t move away, but rather hugged back, John held him closer.

“I love you, too,” he whispered into his shirt.


	10. Chapter 10

Sherlock turned on the shower, feeling the temperature of the water go from cold to almost scalding with his hand.

It was still, theoretically, too early to get up, but he’d been awake for hours already and couldn’t stand lying in bed and staring into the darkness anymore. The noise would probably both wake and alarm John, but Sherlock didn’t care. He felt empty, and not in the good-that-was-actually-really-bad way, but detached and numb. The ruined dinner yesterday had been an out of body experience; he couldn’t rationally explain what he’d done, or why he’d done it, and that bothered him more than the action itself.

He got undressed, carefully avoiding looking down. His body had always been a battle ground, and since he couldn’t say which side he currently was on, he knew he did best in just pretending it wasn’t there at all. Stepping into the tub and having the hot water burn his skin red was liberating, though. A good, harmless pain, that took his mind off… things. Life.

Sherlock had been certain that he could do this; that he would be able to stay objective throughout the case, but clearly he was mistaken. John’s suggestion – or autarchic decision – that he should take other cases for a while felt like a defeat, or a cruel punishment. He wasn’t used to leaving investigations mid-way. There were cases he hadn’t solved, obviously, but he had never stopped before he had worked through every possibility. And this case still had a lot of threads left to follow.

Judging by yesterday’s fiasco, though, John did have an annoying point: Sherlock should stay away from the forums and the blogs. There was another lead though, one he had left on purpose, one he had hoped that he’d never have to go near: Micha. Now that was his only option, that was the way he would have to go, because he would not let it win. 

He would not let it take the work from him ever again!

Sherlock lifted his head, letting the hot water wash over his face. Making a decision, having a plan, felt good. Now he just needed to come up with a ruse that would convince both John and Lestrade to let him do it.

* * *

The lifts at New Scotland Yard were unbelievably slow. 

Sherlock stood impatiently in the back of a particularly crowded one, cursing his own stupidity for not taking the stairs as usual. To make matters worse, in his haste to get out of the flat before John could ask too many questions he had arrived in the tail end of the morning rush. That made it somewhat easier to get in, but it was far from ideal when he wanted Lestrade’s attention.

Not to mention that it made the damned lift stop at every single floor to let people out.

The bullpen at the third floor was semi-full of people, but completely filled with numbing chatter about last night’s activities, commutes, and other inane things. Very few seemed to take notice of Sherlock as he made his way to Lestrade’s office, but his pulse was still as high as if he had in fact run up those flights of stairs. He slowed down his pace, putting his hands in his pockets. It did very little to lower his heart rate, but at least it seemed like he was in control, and that was enough.

The door to Lestrade’s office was open, but Sherlock wasn’t in the habit of knocking anyway, so he just stepped inside.

“I have absolutely no time for you right now,” said Lestrade in greeting when he looked up from behind his desk.

“Ravi Shah or Rebecca Turner.”

Lestrade’s frown turned into an amused smile at the mention of the cold cases. “John’s thrown you out, has he?”

“In a manner of speaking,” said Sherlock, making a face.

Whenever London was boring, or John was particularly annoying, Sherlock used to come to the police archives to go through cold cases. At first it had been Lestrade’s way to make Sherlock stop running around, bugging everyone, but as time had gone by Sherlock had started to go there on his own accord when nothing else managed to hold his attention for long enough.

The abduction of Ravi Shah and the murder of Rebecca Turner were two unsolved cases from Sherlock and Lestrade’s early acquaintance, which were emotionally important to both of them. Sherlock felt slightly bad for using these cases for this, but it was the quickest way he could think of to get John to let him leave unaccompanied, to make Lestrade compliant, and to gain access to police documentation.

And it worked.

Lestrade reached into his pocket and tossed over his keys. “Back with them in ten. You can use Tait’s old office, no one’s moved in there yet.”

Sherlock nodded, going through the keys for the one he needed while working himself up to the real reason he had decided to spend the day at Scotland Yard.

“The suicide at the Rosewood Hotel, is there anything saved from that?”

“Not in evidence, if you mean.” Lestrade looked curiously at him. “Her things went back to her parents after the autopsy was done.”

“Documentation and photos from the scene?”

“Digitally.”

“Can I see it?”

Lestrade peered at him; it took more effort than Sherlock had imagined not to squirm. He met Lestrade’s eyes – doing his best to not look too innocent, because he knew Lestrade wouldn’t buy that. Sometimes he really hated that Lestrade wasn’t the idiot he accused him of being.

“You said it was a waste of time,” Lestrade said after a long five seconds.

“It was,” said Sherlock. “I had a serial killer to track down for you, remember?”

“You solved it in less than a minute. It’s closed. Why on earth do you want to look at it now?”

Sherlock sighed, rolling his eyes.

“Not helping your cause.”

Sherlock made a frustrated sound, though mostly completely fabricated. “I haven’t had a case in _weeks_. You lot are useless, John is completely unreasonable, Molly’s not speaking to me, and I’m… I’m going out of my mind. I need _something_. Insulin suicide, at least that’s novel!”

Lestrade smirked, apparently quite pleased with the reaction he had provoked. Sherlock, too, was pleased, because it meant the act was working as well.

“I’ll get you the file,” said Lestrade, pointing at the door. “Now go and get the other things. I really do need my keys back before half nine. And Sherlock, just one of them.”

Sherlock just barely managed to not roll his eyes again. He didn’t bother closing the door as he left for the basement to fetch one of the decade old cold cases. He used the stairs this time, and after two flights he stopped, taking a moment to lean against the cool wall. He closed his eyes. The first part had gone flawlessly, but he needed to get a grip of himself if he was going to be able to make it through the day.

There was no time to stay here, though. Lestrade would miss his keys, and he needed to get started.

* * *

Former DI Harvey Tait’s office was smaller than Lestrade’s, but it had the same infuriating glass walls. Sherlock had spread out the documents and old photographs from the Ravi Shah case – it had been closer to the entrance than Rebecca Turner’s – on the desk, and taped them up on the wall opposite the door to make it look like he was actually working in case anyone peeked in. 

During the sixteen years he had worked on cold cases he had only solved three, and none of them had been taken to court. It wasn’t a very good statistic, but he didn’t do it to solve them. He did it to remain in control of his life. First it had been solely to stay clean, because if he started using again Lestrade wouldn’t let him work on real cases. Then he had realised that working on cases (both cold and hot ones) became natural semi-fasts, even at times when he considered himself to be fine. To have those short, but regular, periods of food restriction had become absolutely vital in his pursuit to stay away from real starvation. Or worse.

Today it did absolutely nothing for him, though. He just sat there, staring at familiar collection of evidence, and waited for Lestrade to come with Micha’s file. It took over two hours, but just before lunch Lestrade finally came.

“Sorry it took so long,” he said. “HR’s on me about over-time reports that are due at the end of the month.”

Sherlock just glanced at him, but his heart was beating faster and he held out his hand to get the printouts of the suicide.

“I know he’s probably dead,” said Lestrade with a sigh, looking at the photos of Ravi Shah on the wall. “But I keep hoping that it’s a _Deep End of the Ocean_ situation.”

“If he’s still alive, he turned twenty last month.”

Lestrade hummed. “Anyway. I’m planning to be out of here around six, so pack this up before that, would you?”

“Mm, yes.”

Sherlock had already begun to go through the Rosewood folder, very demonstratively not paying Lestrade any attention as he left the room. He didn’t bother removing the Ravi Shah documents from the desk. Instead he just put the new folder down on top of everything and started to read.

The autopsy report was insignificant, but at the top of it were her full name, Sophia Michelle Victoria Troy, and her NHS number. That would undoubtedly make it easier to track her down. Or rather, to track her family down. bubblenox's name was Catherine Troy. Sherlock wondered if John knew that, or if he preferred not knowing.

Clear signs of malnutrition due to long periods of starvation, the report said as he kept on reading. Markings on the teeth and the oesophagus showed signs of repeated – and recent – vomiting. No stomach content.

Almost instinctively, Sherlock leaned over the desk, pressing his stomach against the edge. He didn’t have much stomach content himself after eating just two eggs and three slices of toast for the last twenty-one hours, and he was starting to feel light-headed.

He went on reading the autopsy report, but there was nothing there he didn’t already know. Cause of death was concluded to be heart failure due to self-induced hypoglycaemia and the report was clearly marked with “Suicide” at the top, next to her name. No matter how much Sherlock wanted to, he couldn’t deem the coroner incompetent, because a wider pattern was impossible to see from a single incident.

After that there was a detailed cataloguing of her personal belongings. Sherlock went through the list in search of the insulin she had used. It bothered him that he hadn’t looked into the different available brands, but rather had handed those details over to John.

The next thing in the folder was photos. The room had been very efficiently documented. Sherlock couldn’t remember anyone on the forensic team that day, but whoever had taken these pictures, it hadn’t been their first crime scene. Micha had done a great job staging herself, but the photographer had been amazingly good with working the unflattering lighting. The sternum, for example, was far more distinctive in the photographs than he had remembered it. He could even see that she had broken her left clavicle fairly recently.

Sherlock moved two fingers over the photograph, and realised he was tracing his own collarbone with his other hand. He froze monetarily, before removing his hand from his shoulder and closing the folder. For a long time he just sat there with both his hands on top of it before putting it aside completely. He didn’t need to look at the photos, there was nothing useful in them since The Angel of Death hadn’t been there. They needed the file to get her name and address, and to find out what insulin she’d used, nothing else. 

He leaned back in the chair to stare at the evidence he had taped to the wall again instead, but the photographs of Micha all but screamed at him to pick them up again. The Ravi Shah case did nothing to distract him from going over her last blogpost and suicide note over, and over again in his head.

Not before long, he noticed that his hands had started to tremble. He made them into fists and stubbornly stared at the wall in front of him. He knew he needed to eat, or at least drink something, to get his blood sugar up, but he couldn’t just pack up and leave. Not yet. 

Sherlock looked at the clock on the wall. In about an hour he could probably leave without rising suspicion. One hour, he could do that. As to prove him wrong, his stomach grumbled, and even though he pressed his hand down on his lower abdomen the sound seemed to echo in the small room. Hunger-pangs were nothing, but he wish he’d brought something other than chewing gum to keep it at bay. Preferably something salty. He wondered absently if they had crackers at home, he used to like crackers. 

They probably didn’t have any. For some reason John associated crackers with purging, and to his knowledge Sherlock hadn’t purged in over four years. Sherlock had no plans to engage him in conversation about how wrong he was on both accounts.

Time moved painfully slow. After another fifty-seven minutes of aimlessly shuffling the Ravi Shah case around, he got up to spit out his third piece of chewing gum. The worst of the hunger had passed, but his hands were still slightly unsteady as he started to carefully put away the old evidence. It was tempting to just leave everything in Tait’s office, and go home, but he had a feeling that would come back and bite him in the arse later. The cold cases was a matter of trust, and he needed Lestrade to trust more than his skills to let him keep working here.

When he was done, Sherlock sealed the evidence box properly. He took an extra breath, putting on a mask of bored annoyance, and picked up the box to carry back to Lestrade. 

He met the DI walking down the corridor, looking somewhere between busy and despondent. One of his sergeants were clearly causing him more trouble than usual. Most likely Nilsson. It was always Nilsson.

“Leaving already?” Lestrade asked, frowning as he looked at the evidence box under Sherlock’s arm.

“Yes, there’s nothing new here.”

“I could have told you that this morning.”

Sherlock huffed, holding out his hand for the key Lestrade got out of his pocket.

“And the insulin suicide?” Lestrade asked.

“Barely interesting, but I’m taking it home.”

Lestrade’s frown grew deeper. “You know you’re not supposed to do that.”

“It’s a suicide.”

“It’s personal information.”

“But it’s a suicide.”

“That doesn’t really make a difference,” Lestrade said, but the he sighed. “But fine, take it. Just don’t make me regret it?”

“I’ll be back with the keys,” Sherlock said, walking away from him without commenting further. He appreciated being allowed to take the suicide file home, but if he hadn’t, he would have stopped by a photo copier on the way to the archives. Perhaps that was why Lestrade had given in.

When he came back up to the third floor, he found Lestrade in his office. Sherlock tossed him the keys from the doorstep.

“Thanks,” said Lestrade, making a pained face as he caught the keys. ”How are— Can you close the door?

Sherlock raised an eyebrow, studying Lestrade to figure out what he wanted. He failed. So instead he closed the door as requested.

“Are you doing all right?” Lestrade asked when Sherlock turned his attention to him.

Sherlock’s mouth went dry. “Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’d be better if something interesting would turn up.”

“I meant beside that,” Lestrade said, smiling briefly. “You’ve seemed a bit… unfocused, since the hotel killings.”

Sherlock shrugged. The seconds passed, and Sherlock could see worry starting to seep through Lestrade’s neutral façade. Sherlock didn’t know what to say, but he had to say something. Anything. Preferably now. But his mind was blank.

“Well, if that’s all,” he finally managed to get out, his hand already on the door handle. “Text me if anything comes up.”

Lestrade said his name, followed by a deep sigh, but he did no attempt to follow him. When Sherlock noticed that, he forced himself to slow down his pace to not draw attention to himself. It was absolute torture, but he reminded himself over, and over again that people were unobservant idiots. Not to mention that he was (mostly) okay and didn’t look anorexic anymore, so there was nothing to notice.

Except Lestrade obviously had noticed something, and Sherlock had no idea what it was. As he left Scotland Yard, Sherlock couldn’t tell which of the two made him the most uncomfortable.


	11. Chapter 11

John had spent the day giving a lecture to, as Mike Stamford had once put it, bright young things like they used to be. John hated them too, but he actually enjoyed the once-a-semester inspirational lectures that Mike had talked him into giving, about what it had been like working as an army doctor a decade ago. Today especially, because after the incident yesterday, and being woken up by the shower running this morning it had been a goddamn blessing to leave Sherlock behind and spend a day in a world that was mostly his own.

The first thing he saw when he stepped into the flat was Sherlock’s coat hanging over the sofa’s armrest. It was a hard jerk back to reality. Something was wrong, because Sherlock was supposed to be at Scotland Yard the entire day. John swallowed the bad taste in his mouth, along with a sigh. Life didn’t come with breaks, apparently.

“Sherlock?” he called out, hanging up both his jacket and Sherlock’s coat behind the door.

“You’re home early,” Sherlock called back from the direction of his bedroom.

…and bathroom, John’s mind unhelpfully supplied.

“I could say the same about you,” said John, walking through the kitchen.

He relaxed when he saw Sherlock in front of the mirror in the bedroom, still in the suit he had put on this morning. Sherlock hadn’t worn a suit in two weeks, and John must say that it did amazing things for his bearing and demeanour. It almost made him look as if he was fine, but the dark marks under his eyes still told another story.

John leaned against the doorframe. “I thought you were going to be bugging Lestrade all day.”

“He was being annoying.”

“I’m sure that’s mutual,” John said with a smile.

Sherlock snorted, turning to inspect himself from the side. He sucked in his stomach as much as he could, slowly letting it out again as he exhaled, carefully watching what he was doing in the mirror.

“Is it visible to normal people that I’ve lost about four pounds?” he asked, pressing with his fingers just above the waistband of his trousers.

“I’m not doing this, Sherlock.”

Sherlock looked up at him. “Do what?”

“Answering questions with only wrong answers.”

“Then perhaps you can leave me alone?” Sherlock muttered, turning back to what he was doing. “Or did you want something?”

“No, not really,” John said, feeling his ears turning red. “Just seeing if— ehm, where you were.”

Sherlock sighed, looking down at his fingers which now dug fairly deep into his stomach. Very slowly he removed his hands before turning his back to the mirror. John thought he looked even more tired now than he had this morning, more adrift.

“I’m not purging,” Sherlock said, buttoning up his suit jacket and pulling at its sleeves. “Trust me on that, at least.”

John flinched. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Sherlock said, meeting his eyes. “’Trust them when they are trustworthy’, isn’t that what you say?”

John nodded, unable to keep a neutral face when Sherlock quoted from _LovED Ones_. The last of the positive energy that he had brought with him from Bart’s slipped away. He hated not trusting Sherlock. A lot of the time, that actually was the worst feeling, the most consuming one. The sorrow and the pain, the fear, he had got quite used to living with those. It was the distrust and the doubts that ate away at him.

“When I told you,” Sherlock suddenly said, just as John was about to leave. “What did you…”

“Told me what?”

“Never mind. Forget it,” Sherlock mumbled quickly, shaking his head as to snap out of whatever strange mood he was currently in. He waved a hand in the direction of the bed. “I had Lestrade print out the file on Micha.”

“What?”

“The Rosewood suicide,” Sherlock said. “It’s on the bed.”

John blinked, tearing his eyes from Sherlock to the bed where saw a beige Scotland Yard folder. An all too familiar feeling of despair washed over him. ’Trust them when they are trustworthy’, and Sherlock clearly wasn’t. 

“H-how?” He stuttered.

Sherlock sighed. “As I said, Lestrade printed—“

“Sherlock.” John opened his arms despondently.

“I told him you were being unreasonable, and if he didn’t give me something interesting I would never leave his office.”

“Well, that would do it,” John muttered, walking over to the bed to pick up the folder. Opening it, he felt a very similar discomfort when he saw the photographs as when he had been standing next to the bed at the hotel. The shock was missing, but the unease was the same. “You promised you wouldn’t—“

“I promised to not go on the forums, and I haven’t.”

John sighed, putting the folder away. “Hair splitting. You knew perfectly well what I meant.”

“We needed the information,” Sherlock said. “I saw an opportunity, and I took it.”

“Did you talk to Lestrade?”

“It was inevitable.”

“Sherlock.”

“There’s nothing to—“

“Sherlock!”

Sherlock looked away, wrapping his arms around himself. He shook his head. 

John didn’t take his eyes off Sherlock, waiting for him to speak. He didn’t know what to expect and his gut twisted into a harder and harder knot for every second that passed in silence.

“Sherlock,” John said, gently, when it became evident that Sherlock wasn’t going to start talking. “What’s happened? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s ‘happened’,” Sherlock mumbled. “I told you, I haven’t— I’m not… _doing_ anything.”

“I’m not accusing you of that, either,” said John. “I believe you when you say you haven’t purged. I don’t trust you to never do it again – quite frankly, I don’t expect you to never do it again – but I believe you.”

It was a relief to say it and realise that it was true; he did believe Sherlock when he said he hadn’t purged yet. As he had talked, though, Sherlock had closed his eyes, pressing his arms harder against his body. To John it looked like he was in physical pain, which was why he said:

“If you tell me that nothing’s happened, that what I’m seeing right now is the same thing that had you ruin dinner yesterday” – Sherlock’s tightly shut lips twisted at the mention – “then I’m going to believe that too, but the case? It’s off until you find your balance again. I’m not going to work it, you’re _definitely_ not going to work it. In any way. I don’t care how long it takes or how many people he ends up killing. Your health _has_ to come first.”

Sherlock swallowed, looking somewhere between desperate and grateful when he met John’s eyes. “Nothing’s happened,” he whispered. “Nothing’s happened.”

“Okay,” John said, smiling softly. “Have you eaten anything today?”

Sherlock shook his head.

“Should we do something about that?” John asked. “I can make some breakfast.”

Sherlock frowned. “It’s almost six o’clock.”

“So?” John shrugged, making sure to pick up the Rosewood suicide folder again. “Do you want some eggs and beans? I think we even have tomatoes, and I could do with some sausage.”

“Boiled eggs and toast,” Sherlock said after some consideration. “And non-fried tomatoes.”

“Okay,” said John, smiling honestly and unguarded in relief. “Okay. Egg, toast and fresh tomatoes. That’s good.”

Sherlock looked at him, his eyes wide, but still with his arms protectively around his torso. “John, it was one dinner. I’m not _that_ bad. I eat.”

“I know,” John said, letting go of a deep breath. He put his hand on Sherlock’s crossed arms. “I know, I know. Sometimes I’m just, I feel like… Never mind. My issues. I'm sorry.”

Sherlock moved to take John’s hand, and John found himself, for the second time in a very short while, waiting for Sherlock to build up the strength or courage to say something. John squeezed his hand, watching Sherlock’s face. Sherlock, on the other hand, was looking down at their hands.

“I really thought I could do it,” he said, quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” John squeezed his hand harder, shaking his head. “You’re not failing. You know the safety announcement on aeroplanes? First put on your own oxygen mask, before you help others. You need to put on your oxygen mask.”

“That a ridiculous metaphor.”

“Maybe,” John said. “But you need to focus on your own breathing right now.”

Sherlock nodded.

John nodded as well, kissing Sherlock’s hand gently before letting go. He went to his bedroom to put away the Rosewood suicide folder before he started making their evening-breakfast. About thirty minutes later they both sat down at the sitting room table to eat. They didn’t talk, but after an hour, Sherlock had finished everything he had put on his plate. And he had taken a sausage.


	12. Chapter 12

From the moment they had arrived at the crime scene, Lestrade’s eyes had been on Sherlock. For the life of him, John couldn’t understand why. Sherlock had been doing well these last two months since they had taken a real break from the Angel of Death case. He’d been eating sufficiently, if not with much variety, for three weeks by now and John saw no reason for Lestrade to watch over him like he did. If you asked John, nothing showed. Perhaps it was just his own insecurities about taking a murder case again, but whatever it was, it made him extremely guarded. Sherlock had been to Scotland Yard three times in the last months, claiming to have been working on cold cases, and John had chosen to believe him. Seeing Lestrade now made John wonder if it had been a diversion for investigating the Angel of Death those times, too.

John stood in the corner of the small bedsit that was the crime scene, putting on latex gloves, and did his best to focus on the dead woman on the floor rather than on Lestrade and Sherlock. The victim, a law student, was lying face down on the floor. She was short – John would say 155 cm, tops – clearly overweight, and somewhere between 20 and 25 years old. Sherlock had been less intrigued by the dead body, and more by the Wicca-like shrine in the back of the room. That was the reason they had been called in, after all, because as soon as there was anything that could be even remotely linked to witchcraft or the like, the police wanted to get it solved before the press had the opportunity to have its way with it.

“May I?” John asked Lestrade, nodding towards the body on the floor when he was done with the gloves. After receiving confirmation, he squatted down next to the dead woman. 

One of the first things he had noted when he stepped into the room was the abrasions on the victim’s left hand. When he examined them closer he saw that they were concentrated to her first three knuckles and her index and middle finger. He closed his eyes for a moment, thinking that this couldn’t be happening. To confirm what he already knew, he put a finger in her mouth to feel her teeth.

“Sherlock,” he said, and when Sherlock turned around, he held up the dead woman’s hand to show the abrasions. “Her teeth have taken quite a beating, too.”

Something tightened around Sherlock’s mouth.

“What?” asked Lestrade, looking between them.

John met Sherlock’s eyes to get permission to say something, but Sherlock just stood there, absently touching an old scar on his own right knuckles. John could tell that he was actively avoiding looking at the body.

“She’s bulimic,” John said, turning to Lestrade, when he realised Sherlock wouldn’t say anything. “Probably for quite some time, by the state of her teeth.”

“Really?” Lestrade seemed very sceptical as he let his eyes wander over the dead body. “But she’s so—“

“Fat?” Sherlock snapped, giving Lestrade a dark glare.

“Well, yeah.”

Both John and Sherlock stared at him.

“What?” Lestrade asked again.

John shook his head and turned back to the dead woman, searching for any kind of needle marks. Sherlock abandoned the shrine to instead search her nightstand, and then her bathroom.

“Anything?” John asked as soon Sherlock came out to the bedsit again.

“Atorvastatin, naproxen, Rennie and about five other antacids, paracetamol, two types of laxative, and what I assume is homemade ipecac,” Sherlock said, sounding inappropriately relieved.

John sat back on his heels, just as pleased with those findings as Sherlock. It didn’t last long though, because Sherlock’s next search – under the bed – generated an ice-cream box with seven prefilled insulin pens.

“John,” he said, handing him the ice-cream box. His face was once again neutral, but John could swear there was a tremor in his voice.

John took the box, picking up one of the pens just to make sure it was empty. “Damn…”

“Guys, seriously, what?” Lestrade said, sternly this time. “I need to get the real people in here.”

John and Sherlock looked at each other. John raised his eyebrows slightly; Sherlock looked like a deer caught in the headlights, but he gave a small nod.

John nodded once, too, and got up. “You have another serial suicide on your hands,” he told Lestrade.

“What?”

Sherlock snorted. “Is that the only word in your vocabulary today?”

“Sherlock,” John said, giving him a look. He put the insulin down on the bed, turning back to Lestrade. “Let’s go outside.”

They all stepped into the corridor. John didn’t stop walking until they were at the far end of it, out of earshot from the crime scene. Sherlock stood next to him, hands deep in his pockets, looking firmly in the direction they had come from, but it was obvious – to John at least – that he wasn’t seeing the people going in and out of the bedsit.

“Well?” Lestrade prompted.

John wet his lips, doing his best to keep his focus on Lestrade. “This woman killed herself with insulin, just like the woman at the Rosewood Hotel.”

At the mention of the Rosewood suicide, Lestrade gave Sherlock a quick glance. John cleared his throat to get Lestrade’s attention back to him.

“After you printed out the file for Sherlock, I got curious and started looking into it. Wanted to see if she was diabetic or not, since you know I told you it’s mostly diabetics and medical personnel that use insulin.”

“So this is _you_?”

“Yes,” John said, keeping his voice much quieter than necessary. “It turns out she wasn’t diabetic, and that she was unemployed, which means she probably didn’t have legal access to insulin. Just like the insulin we found in that room wasn’t prescribed, or at least not handed out properly.”

“How do you know that?”

John raised his eyebrows. “Besides the fact that she had seven individual pens in an ice-cream carton under her bed?”

“It’s enough that I take this kind of thing from him,” Lestrade said, pointing at Sherlock.

“I’m sorry,” John said, sighing. “It’s just… not important right now. So, when I started to investigate it, I found fourteen other women with eating disorders who had killed themselves in the same way. This one makes sixteen in total.”

Lestrade looked from one to the other, seeming both confused and annoyed by all of it. “The Rosewood thing was ages ago. Why haven’t you— Sixteen dead women? John?”

“I know,” John said, shaking his head. “It’s just that I don’t have anything. Not really. I have screen names, five mentions of an unnamed man who seems to supply the insulin, and an educated guess that all of these women are from the London area.”

“You think there’s something to this?” Lestrade asked Sherlock.

Sherlock nodded, but didn’t look at him.

“Well, then,” Lestrade muttered, sighing deeply. “Do you have documentation for all of it?”

“Yes,” said John.

“Good.” It didn’t sound like he thought any of this was anything but frustrating. “Go home. Get it. Meet me at Scotland Yard as soon as you possibly can. I… need to go back in there and change their instructions. Anything else you want to clue me in on?”

“Get her computer?”

Lestrade gave John a demeaning look.

“Sorry, I didn’t—“

“No, it’s…” Lestrade’s face softened, and he waved it off. “We really should start talking football, you know. See you at the office in a couple of hours.”

As soon as Lestrade turned to walk back to the crime scene, both John and Sherlock deflated. John allowed himself to look at Sherlock again, who had gone pale, but otherwise looked overly calm.

“Lying to the police is a criminal offence,” Sherlock said under his breath, still sounding strained.

“It’s not like it’s my first time,” John mumbled. “You okay?”

Sherlock shook his head, seemingly more to wake up than to answer. “Don’t worry.”

John was about to protest, but then he heard Donovan calling out directions over at the crime scene. The coroner arrived. Lestrade stepped out into the corridor again to let him inside. John nodded; this wasn’t the place, but there was one more thing he needed to say.

“I’m sorry.”

Sherlock turned to him, a hint of surprise in his eyes. “It needed to be done,” he said, soberly but detached. “It was a sufficient enough lie.”

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” John admitted, with a small frown. “We should go back to Baker Street.”

“Yes.”

They looked at each other; for a moment neither of them bothered putting on a face and John wondered for a split second if he looked as wrecked at Sherlock. Then, as if on a given cue, they both straightened up. Sherlock even took his hands out of his pockets as they walked past the crime scene, his open coat billowing behind him as if he had nothing to hide.


	13. Chapter 13

“This is sickening,” Lestrade muttered, sitting behind the desk in his office and scrolling through the material John and Sherlock had brought. “I could happily have gone my entire life without knowing of any of this.”

John stood next to his chair, arms crossed over the chest, nodding grimly. For some reason, he felt irrationally angry about the fact that there were people in the world for whom it was actually a possibility to remain ignorant about the horrors of eating disorders.

“I mean, listen to this—“

“Thanks, I’ve read it,” John interrupted sternly, before Lestrade had time to start reading out loud.

Lestrade didn’t seem upset by being told off; instead he just seemed amazed by the things described, and kept on reading silently. Now and then he shook his head as if he couldn’t believe any of it.

John looked over at Sherlock, who was sitting on a chair in the corner of the small office, picking at his nails. The detached façade was pretty solid, and if you just glanced at him, he mostly looked bored. John didn’t glance, though: he noticed the very strained lines around Sherlock’s mouth, the protective way he had now wrapped the coat around himself, the small twitch at the corner of the right eye that often indicated headaches.

“Well?” John asked when Lestrade leaned back in his chair after reaching the end.

“Yeah, this is… something.” Lestrade sighed, turning to him. “I don’t know if they’d be able to charge murder for it, but it’s at least cause of grievous bodily harm.”

“That’s not enough,” Sherlock muttered, eyes on his knuckles.

The other two stared at him. Sherlock hadn’t said much since they had left the crime scene, and John had given him space by not asking questions, but this was the first thing he had said at all since they arrived at Scotland Yard.

“That’s not enough,” he said again, looking darkly straight at Lestrade. “He doesn’t want to cause harm; he wants them dead, and preys on the fact that a lot of them probably wanted that too.”

“I’m not disagreeing,” said Lestrade. “I’m just saying: giving a mentally unstable person the equivalent of a loaded gun is a shit thing to do, but it can be hard to get a murder conviction.”

“It’s assisted suicide, at the least.”

“What does it matter?” Lestrade asked. “It’s not up to us to charge the bastard, anyway. It’s tricky. They’re killing themselves, and suicide is common in self-harm communities, so it’ll be—“

“It’s not self-harm.”

Lestrade pointed at the computer screen. “Have you seen this?”

“It’s not self-harm!”

“Drop it,” John said, raising his voice to cut Sherlock off. “It doesn’t matter right now.”

Sherlock moved his dark glare from Lestrade to John, but didn’t say anything else. Instead he got up and left the room, closing the door a little harder than absolutely necessary.

The other two sighed.

“Anyway,” Lestrade said, clearing his throat. “This obviously is something, and I’ll find resources for it, but John, why didn’t you come to me with this sooner?”

John tore his eyes from the door. He rather successfully blocked out the dozen images of where Sherlock might be going, but the look Lestrade gave him told him that he’d failed to keep the worry from shining through. Thankfully, Lestrade didn’t comment.

“I don’t know,” John said, faintly. “I suppose I kept wishing it wasn’t true.”

“Yeah,” Lestrade said, nodding as if he understood. “I’m still waiting for the day I’ll stop being surprised by the things people do to each other.”

“I hope you never get there.”

Lestrade smiled wearily. “Me too. Now, anything else before I put wheels in motion and make this an official case?”

John could swear his heart stopped for a moment, before he realised – or managed to convince himself, at least – that Lestrade wasn’t asking about Sherlock but rather about more information concerning the case. His eyes darted towards the door; he really wanted to go and search for Sherlock, but he turned back to Lestrade.

“I don’t think so,” he said. He finally uncrossed his arms, opening his tightly closed fists as well, but he didn’t manage to relax. “Just that… I don’t think I’ve found all of them.”

Lestrade hummed. “Figured as much.”

“And there are a couple of websites that I’ve been meaning to go through, but haven’t got around to. I can show you now, or we can take it later.”

“Might as well now.” Lestrade moved his chair to the right, giving John access to the computer.

“It is self-harm by the way,” John mumbled as he leaned over the keyboard to write the URLs. “One of the deadliest kinds.”

* * *

Sherlock fumbled with the teabag, his hands shaking in some combination of anger and humiliation.

His first instinct when he had walked out of Lestrade’s office had been to leave Scotland Yard altogether, but for some reason he was still there, in the break room at the far end of the third floor corridor. Failing to make himself a cup of tea.

Everything was falling apart. He had been so happy this morning when Lestrade had called, so _grateful_ for police incompetence, because he had desperately needed a break. He had consumed over 2400 calories per day for almost a month to get himself back to where he’d been before this had started. It had been too much, too fast, but there had been no way for him wind it back without good reason because of John and his constant supervision.

God, how he’d hated John these last couple of days.

He had needed a short period, just a couple of days, of restriction when no one would be bothered with what he ate. A few days without questions and looks from John. And this is what he had got instead: having to sit and listen to Lestrade indirectly calling him a mentally unstable self-harmer.

Sickening.

Disgusting.

Disgusted…

Lestrade was disgusted by it. That it made him uncomfortable wasn’t news, Sherlock had seen it at Rosewood already. The pity, the mixture of guilt and blame – Sherlock’s mother had been an expert in that particular look. John wasn’t that far behind. It made Sherlock’s skin crawl, but at least it was marginally better than the disgust Lestrade had displayed while reading through the various posts John had shown him.

Sherlock wondered what John was allowing himself to say now that he was out of the room. John was usually pretty good at keeping his tongue in check, but, as recent discoveries had proven, he thought a lot more than he said, and Sherlock had now efficiently robbed him of his only emotional outlet. As much as Sherlock hated to admit it, it had begun to show, and it frightened him that they were both starting to fall apart. He recognised the lead-up to his own breakdowns, but he didn’t remember what John’s looked like – or whether he had ever truly seen it – and for the first time in a long while, he didn’t entirely trust John.

His phone vibrated. Two short buzzes – text message.

He gave up on the teabag and reached into his pocket. It was from John, of course it was.

_Where are you?_

At first he didn’t feel like replying. John could probably guess why he had stormed out, and Sherlock wasn’t very interested in proving him right. Staying at Scotland Yard hadn’t been to show that he was okay, though, but more to make sure that John was. At least he thought so.

_Smaller break room. 3rd floor.  
SH_

He pressed send, put away the phone, and made a new attempt with the tea. It worked really well this time, his hands suddenly steady now that he knew John would be there soon. He took down a second mug as he waited, and made tea for John as well.

“I was sure you’d left,” John said when he opened the door.

Sherlock pushed the tea mug along the counter towards him. “That was the plan.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Sherlock shrugged.

“Lestrade’s started to put together a team,” John said, picking up his tea. “It’ll probably be Donovan and Gartner, because they were at the scene today.”

Two women. Somehow that felt significant, but Sherlock couldn’t say why, or if he appreciated it. He nodded to show that he had taken in the information. It didn’t matter who had the case, not really, as long as it was Lestrade’s lot. It was always better to have Lestrade’s lot, no matter the case. It had to be the same now. The only way he would get through this was to treat it as any other case – and why wouldn’t he? There was nothing special about this case.

Except everything.

“I know you don’t want to—“

Sherlock jumped at the sound of John’s voice, almost spilling his tea. He looked embarrassed at John, turning around to set down the mug before he’d make a complete fool of himself. 

“I know you don’t want to,” John started again, “but can you at least consider talking to Lestrade about… you know?”

“No.”

John sighed, clearly not pleased with that answer, but nodded, and didn’t press the issue. Sherlock watched his profile; the deeper lines around the eyes, the nick of the razor just beneath his ear, the untidy hair after having run a hand through it one too many times… Sherlock wondered how long John had been this tired, and the shame felt like lead in his gut.

“There’s nothing to tell him,” Sherlock said, because it was the only thing he could think of. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah, so am I,” John muttered, putting his mug down next to Sherlock’s. “Look, I’m not saying that you have to talk to him, I’m just asking you to think about it.”

“But I’m _fine_.”

“So I can start buying cheese again?”

Sherlock huffed, and looked away, his cheeks heating at the mention of the cheese. It had been naïve of him to think John hadn’t noticed just because he hadn’t mentioned it before. From the corner of his eye he saw John move, and he felt a hand on his arm. It was a light, gentle touch, as if John wasn’t sure he was allowed. Sherlock wasn’t sure either, but he stayed still.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up here,” John said quietly. “But you have to stop saying you’re fine when you’re not. Can you please do that?”

Sherlock nodded. He didn’t understand why that was important to John, who obviously knew when he wasn’t fine. Still he relentlessly kept asking for Sherlock to make promises he never kept.

“Now let’s go home.” John squeezed his arm. “We’ve got nothing to do here, and they already think we left anyway. Lestrade will call us if there’s anything.”

Sherlock nodded again, taking a step away and finally putting some distance between them. The pain that action caused John was poorly hidden behind a fabricated smile, but Sherlock pretended he didn’t notice.

He poured out both their teas in the sink, and put away the mugs in the dishwasher before they left to make sure there was no trace of him having been in the break room.

* * *

John woke to the violin that night. Unlike the last time Sherlock had played violin in the middle of the night, John didn’t waste time trying to figure out what tune it was. Nor did he stay in bed. Instead, he put on his bathrobe over his pyjama bottoms and headed downstairs.

Sherlock had gone straight to his room after they had returned from Scotland Yard. It had felt like the least worrying alternative at the time, but when Sherlock hadn’t come out for the rest of the evening, John had become less confident that the isolation was a good thing. At least Sherlock had talked to him through the closed door after Lestrade had called to confirm the unsurprising cause of death for the law student, but it still had taken a long time before John had fallen asleep.

Now Sherlock was standing by the window, turning to give John a quick glance as he came into the sitting room. The motion didn’t interrupt the melody – it was a Sherlock Holmes Original, John recognised it now. The fact that Sherlock didn’t stop playing meant that he didn’t mind the company. John sat down on the sofa, because even if he was incredibly tired, he’d rather not leave Sherlock alone.

The melody built onto another and then another and then yet another, so that when Sherlock finally stopped, John had almost drifted off to sleep anyway.

“Go back to bed,” Sherlock softly said, taking the violin from his shoulder.

“ _You_ go back to bed.” John yawned and stretched. “Have you even tried to sleep tonight?”

Sherlock shook his head.

“What’s on your mind?”

“The case.”

“Just the case, or…”

Sherlock put the violin and the bow on the table, stalling for time rather than avoiding the question. He plucked the A string once, twice. Three times… John waited patiently, but lost track of the plucking when it reached the early twenties. He cleared his throat.

Sherlock stilled the strings with his hand. “What did you think when I told you that I…?”

John waited for the end of the sentence to be able to answer, but instead Sherlock just repeated the half-sentence. Sherlock met his eyes, looking as if he was begging John to understand. It made John’s entire body ache when he realised what Sherlock was talking about.

“You didn’t tell me,” John said. “I figured it out, remember?”

“Because you kept looking.”

“Yes.”

Sherlock nodded, gathering focus to start over. “What did you think, then, when you figured it out?”

“Why? What’s this about, Sherlock?”

“Nothing.”

“No, try again.”

Sherlock sighed dramatically. “Why do you think I should tell him?”

“Tell who what?”

“Are you being thick on purpose?” Sherlock muttered. “Lestrade! Why should I tell him that I have a—What possible good can come of that?”

John shook his head. “I’m not going to ask you to do that again.”

“But you think I should.”

“Yes, because…” John said slowly, preparing for the argument he feared would follow. ”Because I really think it would help us deal with this.”

“I don’t need ‘dealing with’.”

“Not you. This.” John waved his hand in the air, indicating just about everything. “Us. The case. Your eating dis—“

“That _definitely_ don’t need to be dealt with by Lestrade. Or you.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” John said, silently cursing Sherlock for picking the middle of the night to have a conversation like this. “Listen, Lestrade cares for you. He would never intentionally do anything that would hurt you, but he’s walking around blind in a minefield right now and is going to put you in difficult situations without meaning to.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“But you don’t have to, that’s the point.” John wet his lips. “Your last severe relapse was triggered by a case, and that one was _nothing_ compared to this one. Nothing. This case is killing us both, and I don’t want you to spend all your energy on hiding from Lestrade.”

“I’m—“ Sherlock bit off his sentence, and started again. “I’ll be fine.”

“Why won’t you just talk to him?”

“Because it’s bad enough that you know!”

John stared at him. It felt as if he had been slapped across the room, and it was difficult to breathe. Sherlock seemed as taken aback by his outburst as John, but John didn’t quite register that. 

“Yeah,” John mumbled, his ears still ringing with Sherlock’s words. “I haven’t made things better, have I?”

“No, you haven’t,” Sherlock said, his voice much calmer. “I don’t want— I can’t go through something like that again.”

John willed himself to look directly at Sherlock. “Okay.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” John shook his head. “I don’t want you to go through that again, either.”

With that, John deemed the conversation over and got up. He wasn’t sure he would be able to go back to sleep, but they really shouldn’t keep having this conversation now.

“Are you coming to bed?” he asked on pure impulse. 

Sherlock blinked. Relief, and the hint of a smile, brushed over his features. “I’ll be up in a minute.”

“I’ll come down and get you if you aren’t,” John said, dropping his own weary smile as soon as he had turned his back to Sherlock. The words still echoed in his head, and deep down he felt that it was true: he did make Sherlock worse.

John hadn’t much more than lain down before he heard Sherlock pushing the door open. He moved the covers aside to let Sherlock crawl in, but Sherlock didn’t make any effort to get into bed.

“What is it?” John asked, getting up on his elbow.

“What _did_ you think when you figured it out?”

“I didn’t.”

Sherlock didn’t reply. John got up on his elbow. 

“I mean, I didn’t think much,” he said, trying to remember. “I hadn’t more than wrapped my head around it before you— before I had to pick the lock to the bathroom that first time.” He held out his hand to Sherlock. He became warm from the inside out when Sherlock took it. “After that, everything just… crashed, I suppose.”

“You’ve never thought that I’m… broken?”

“No.” John squeezed his hand tightly. “I’ve always thought you’re amazingly strong.”

“You’re an idiot…”

“I know,” John said, quietly. “I know. Now get in.”

Sherlock hesitated a moment, but finally got into bed. He made sure to keep a distance between them, but didn’t let go of John’s hand. In a matter of minutes, John felt the grip around his hand loosen and he heard the breathing change as Sherlock fell asleep, clearly exhausted after the day.

John didn’t find sleep any easier to come by the second time around tonight, and he kept mulling over Sherlock’s questions – and the possible reason for them – again and again. He honestly couldn’t remember what he had thought when he had first realised what was up with Sherlock’s eating, just the general feeling of helpless despair.

He brought their hands closer to him and kissed Sherlock’s, deciding to pick up the habit of sleeping in the same bed as Sherlock again. At least until this case was over.


	14. Chapter 14

It surprised John how fast things got done once objective people with proper resources were put on the case. The IT people traced the communication between the law student and the individual who had provided her with the insulin to five different IP-addresses, all open to the public. John and Sherlock, helpfully backed up by the Met, managed to both account for the insulin the law student and Micha had used and locate the pharmacies and care units to which those particular batches had been distributed. Meanwhile Donovan and Gartner, with their access to the police database, found twenty-nine reported insulin suicides linked to people with eating disorders over the last two years – only nine of them coincided with the ones John had found, making the possible body count staggeringly high.

The total number made John feel sick. It was however nothing compared to how it made him feel that three days after they brought the case to Lestrade, Donovan and Gartner arrested a suspect. He had been stalling for months, during which at least five women had been coached to kill themselves. Not to mention what Sherlock had gone through. It had taken only three days to get a suspect in custody. Three days. As he stood in the observation room, watching Donovan interrogate the man – a GP from Bromley – John had a hard time separating his disgust for the man from his own self-loathing. He had failed so many people.

“You look terrible,” Lestrade said by way of greeting, as he joined him in the small room.

“Thanks,” John said, putting on a fairly acceptable smile. “I feel like a proper idiot for not telling you about this shit sooner.”

“You should,” Lestrade said, turning off the sound from the interrogation room. “Don’t beat yourself up too much, though. Some thirty deaths, or whatever it ends on, and no one but you made the connection.”

“Thanks,” John said again, this time the smile came easier. “Do you think the case will hold?”

“Well, we can link him to both of the known insulin batches, and CCTV puts him in the library at the time their wifi was used to communicate with the latest victim. That’s all circumstantial, but I’m sure it’ll get us a warrant for his computer, his phone, and various records. If it is him, we’ll get enough technical evidence to bind it together. Then it’s up to the CPS to build the case.”

“If you don’t get enough to prove it’s him, though?”

“Sherlock’s sure it’s him, and I know better than to doubt him by now,” said Lestrade. Then he continued very carefully: “If you don’t have a reason why I should.”

“No.” John felt the colour drain from his face. “What—what reason should that be?”

“You tell me.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” John said, actually smiling for real as Sherlock’s words fall out of his mouth. “Really.”

“You’re a terrible liar, John.”

John’s smile turned into a tired chuckle; it was an incredibly nice feeling. Lestrade had perhaps not intended the comment as a joke, but the fact that he cared enough to not take bullshit was appreciated. And that he genuinely wanted to help the victims made it easier to meet his eyes.

“You can trust Sherlock, I promise,” he said.

“There’s nothing going on that I should know about?”

“You can trust him.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I know.”

Lestrade shook his head, as if giving up. “Can I ask how you are, or is that classified too?”

“I’m fine,” John replied automatically, but as soon as he heard himself say it he sighed. “I don’t remember the last time I was this tired.” 

“The offer to talk still stands, you know.”

John nodded.

“But you won’t take me up on it.”

“No, but thank you. It… it means a lot.”

“It’s the least I can do. Literally,” Lestrade said, turning on the sound from the interrogation room again just to hear Donovan cut off the interview for a break.

“I’m pretty sure Sherlock lifted your cigarettes from your coat pocket,” John said. “So maybe don’t trust him too much.”

* * *

Sherlock had fled up to the roof of Scotland Yard. Perhaps ‘fled’ was a strong word, but he had retreated there to get away for a while. Going through the stack of suicides that Donovan and Gartner had found had been more trying than he had expected.

Summer was coming, slowly but inevitably. Sherlock had an inherent dislike for the summer and the pressure to wear less clothes. The coat, the scarf, and the (sometimes) well-fitting suits were all part of his outer defences. It was hard for the average person to notice fluctuations in weight when you always wore the same type of clothes. Sadly, it was impossible to wear the coat and scarf during a London summer. Not that he didn’t try.

The insanity wasn’t always hard to admit to.

He had taken Lestrade’s cigarettes before getting up here. The package he had bought after leaving the crime scene at the Rosewood Hotel had lasted for five weeks. The next had only lasted two. Then he had gone through about a package a week for months. John must have noticed, but to his credit he hadn’t said a word about it. The smoking wasn’t even for the hunger suppressant; at least it hadn’t been at first and it wasn’t about that now. Perhaps at some point, some part of him had used it for that. He wasn’t sure, and he didn’t want to think about it, but he had decided to not buy any more cigarettes. It was for the best.

Nicking Lestrade’s didn’t count. It was more of a humanitarian act; he was looking after the DI’s health.

He put out the cigarette against the side of an air vent. His fingers itched to light another one, but the copious amounts of caffeine – he hadn’t used that as a hunger suppressant either, really – and the lack of salt already had his hand trembling and he was feeling queasy enough as it was. A smaller nicotine overdose wouldn’t improve anything. He just wasn’t ready to go down again yet.

The door to the roof opened. Sherlock turned around, half-expecting to see John, and frowned internally – and externally – when he saw that it was Lestrade.

“Thought I’d find you here,” Lestrade said, walking up to him.

“Perhaps we can make a proper detective out of you one day.”

Lestrade held out his hand. “Give me back my cigarettes and I’ll let that comment pass.”

Sherlock smirked, reaching into his pocket to follow orders. The smirk disappeared when he gave Lestrade the package and the lighter and noticed the intensity with which Lestrade watched the tremors in his hand. Sherlock made both his hands into fists and put them in his pockets.

“Sherlock, are— Is everything all right?” Lestrade said, putting away the cigarettes.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“You tell me.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

Lestrade raised his eyebrows. “You’re just a slightly better liar than John.”

Sherlock’s insides froze. “What’s he said?”

“That there’s nothing to tell, and you know as well as I do what it usually means when two people use the exact same wording in interrogation.”

“You’re _interrogating_ us?”

Lestrade sighed. ”No, I’m asking. As a friend. Who has seen you like this before.”

The icy grip Sherlock’s nerves had on his intestines loosened. He could feel the tension leaving his body, he didn’t even care that his relief at Lestrade’s wrong assumption was probably visible from space.

“I’m not using,” he said, very calmly.

“I really want to believe that,” Lestrade said. “It’s just, I’ve seen this before and I can’t have you here if you’re using.”

“Believe it or not, Detective Inspector, but that’s the main reason I don’t.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Sherlock said. “Do you want me to pee in a cup? Or do you prefer blood or hair?”

“Urine will do fine,” Lestrade said, sounding disturbingly pleased that Sherlock hadn’t put up a fight. 

“Have your pot maid find me before I leave,” Sherlock said, looking away and staring into the distance. 

Lestrade muttered about going to set it up, and when Sherlock heard the door shut behind him, he closed his eyes. He really wished he hadn’t given Lestrade the cigarettes back.

* * *

Lestrade was his own pot maid. 

Sherlock gave the cup a look, frowning, as Lestrade locked the toilet door behind them. This would have been deeply humiliating if not for the fact that in their early accountancy this had been a weekly occurrence. Now it was just slightly demeaning.

“I suppose privacy is still too much to ask for?” Sherlock asked, putting the cup on the sink, and started to unbuckle his belt. 

“Yes.”

Lestrade’s face was as neutral as he seemed able to keep it, but his embarrassment over the situation was clear. Sherlock couldn’t help feeling gleeful about just how much worse he’d feel when it would be clear that he’d put them both through this for no good reason. 

From his extensive experience in this situation he knew that Lestrade would keep his eyes straight ahead throughout, but it still took an act of stubborn willpower for Sherlock to manage to pull down his trousers and pants enough to be able to do this without getting stains on himself. He didn’t even get undressed around John.

In the back of his head there was also a small voice whispering about ketone levels. Not that that would show up on a regular drug test, and he highly doubted Lestrade would ask for anything other than that when he asked for baseless drug testing of his pseudo employees, but still. He almost certainly had normal ketone levels, too, because he was… okay. 

Sherlock turned his back as much as he could remember being able getting away with, and filled the cup. He was careful putting the lid on – he didn’t want to have to do this again in a couple of hours – and zipped up his trousers before handing the cup over to Lestrade. 

“Thank you,” Lestrade mumbled, putting the urine sample in a brown paper bag. “I won’t use your name for it.”

Sherlock shrugged, that really didn’t matter to him.

“I’m clean,” he said.

“I would love to believe you,” Lestrade said. “But if it’s one thing this job has taught me, it’s that everyone lies and addicts lie even more.”

Sherlock shrugged again, he couldn’t argue with that, but he demonstratively turned to wash his hands, opening the tap with such force that the water would drown out whatever else Lestrade might try to say. It frustrated him that his cheeks heated red, but there was nothing he could do about that other than ignore it. When he turned off the water, he gave Lestrade a short glare – why was he still there? – as he reached for the paper towels.

“I don’t expect an apology when you get the results back,” he said. 

“Right,” Lestrade said, sighing. “Listen, Sherlock, whatever it is, I know something’s not right – no, don’t argue with me, something is – and I want to help, if I can.”

Sherlock took a deep breath to make sure to steady his voice. “The only thing wrong is that I’m having my integrity questioned and my privacy invaded by London’s finest.”

“Fine,” Lestrade said, clearly not convinced at all. “At least take John home before he falls over, would you?”

Sherlock inhaled, gearing up to argue – it was their case, John wasn’t tired, there was _nothing wrong_ – but the look Lestrade was giving him made it clear that he couldn’t lie his way out of this. Leaving Scotland Yard under the cover of taking care of John was his best option right now. 

He breathed out in a sigh. “I will.”

Lestrade stepped aside to let him out without a word. It felt as if he had admitted to something being wrong, but Lestrade had had him cornered and there had been no other way out. Going home to regroup would be good. 

He was so close, he couldn’t fail now.


	15. Chapter 15

It was just after midnight, and the flat was too quiet.

Sherlock moved from the sofa to the window, then over to the mantelpiece where he picked up and then put down the skull. He walked through to the kitchen, walked around the kitchen table, moving test tubes and making sure all the lids were closed. He opened and closed the fridge, only to open it again – it was tragically empty, but neither of them had even pretended to bother with eating since they had handed the case to Lestrade. After closing the fridge door for the third time he managed to step away from it and walk back to the sitting room. To the window. Then to the sofa again.

The silence was closing in on him, slowly driving him insane. More so than he clearly already was. He picked up the violin, rested his chin against it, and for a very brief moment he was at peace at the prospect of filling the room with music. He gently placed the bow against the strings, resisting the urge to move it. John had gone to bed hours ago, and he didn’t want to wake him if he had finally managed to fall asleep. Also, he didn’t want John come out and join him. The silence might be suffocating, but company would be excruciating. Not to mention that John truly needed to sleep; he’d been on the brink of collapsing when they had arrived home this afternoon. Sherlock would never forgive himself for needing Lestrade to point out John’s exhaustion to him. 

Sherlock put down the violin; the longing to play was almost physically painful.

He paced back and forth. From the sofa, to the window, to the mantelpiece. To the kitchen. Back to the sitting room. Every now and then he walked up to the bedroom door. He, too, was exhausted. Lying down next to John, have his soft snoring force the silence away, felt as appealing as playing the violin. Perhaps even more so. He hadn’t known how desperately he had missed lying next to someone until John had asked him to sleep in his bed after the case that had led them to Micha. The risk of waking John still made him back away from the door.

Sofa, window, mantelpiece, kitchen, sofa again.

He sat down only to get up right away. Every cell in his body was screaming at him to rest, but there were too many things going round and round in his head for him to stay still. It made him dizzy, but he was afraid to focus on any one thought for long enough to make it stop.

The drug test wouldn’t tell Lestrade anything he didn’t want him to know. Not to mention that there wasn’t anything there to start with; he had practically been force feeding himself for weeks up until three days ago. It was all fine, and he knew that. He did. But Lestrade’s question – what was wrong, if it wasn’t drugs – rang louder than anything else. 

Along with John’s gentle but persistent nudgings to talk to him. 

More than once tonight, Sherlock had mumbled “There’s nothing to tell” under his breath. It felt less true each time he said it. Every time he came back to the sofa, every time he opened the fridge, every time he didn’t open the bedroom door, he became more and more convinced that he was losing his mind. Slowly, but definitely.

He stopped in the middle of the room, running his hands through his hair. He needed to sleep, he needed to… get control over his life again. Any way he knew how. Even if just for a minute. Even if just for _a second_.

He almost ran to the fridge and jerks the door open. His eyes frantically searched its pathetic content: milk, jam, pickled pearl onions, old vegetables, boiled eggs, ketchup, butter, beer… 

Shaking from head to toe he let the door fall close. He sobbed once, sinking down on the floor and curling up to a ball. Saved by the lack of food. He covered his face with his hands. He couldn’t stay like this, he couldn’t let John find him like here tomorrow, but right now the hard floor helped. It was uncomfortable and gave him something concrete to focus on, as he slowly started to try sorting out his thoughts.

* * *

“Sherlock, would you _please_ pick up your phone?” John yelled from the kitchen, when Sherlock’s phone rang for the third time within twenty minutes. 

John had slept extremely bad last night, dreaming strange dreams about skeleton zombies in Afghanistan, and had no patience for Sherlock being, well, Sherlock. 

Yesterday, as they had left Scotland Yard, just about everyone involved in the Angel of Death case had told them not to come in today. It was hard to tell if they all had thought he and Sherlock looked completely wrung out, like Lestrade had claimed, or if they just had wanted them out of the way, as Donovan and Gartner had. Either way, the excuse to not work the case today was welcomed.

Or had been at first.

“You do hear the phone, right?” John asked, walking into the sitting room.

Sherlock was lying on the sofa without confirming in any way that he heard the phone. Or John.

John picked the mobile off the table just as it stopped ringing. “It’s Lestrade,” he said, checking the call-log. “Perhaps he wants us to come in after all.”

“No, he would have called you after I didn’t answer the first time if that was the case,” said Sherlock, just as Lestrade did his fourth attempt to reach Sherlock.

“The more reason to pick up,” John muttered, glaring down at Sherlock, and answered the phone. “Hi, Greg, it’s John. No, everything’s fine; Sherlock’s just being a tit for a change.”

As he listened to what Lestrade had to say, John got even more tired. He felt his annoyance morph into something rather detached he didn’t know the word for. He thanked Lestrade one time too many for calling, before he hung up.

John turned the mobile in his hands for a moment before saying: “So… that was Lestrade.”

“You don’t say?”

“He said the _drug test_ came back negative.”

“Unsurprising as well,” Sherlock muttered. “Hardly worth calling four times for.”

“Not that I’m not thrilled that you’re clean, but when did you take a drug test? And for that matter _why_?”

“Because Lestrade’s an idiot.”

“No, he’s not. He cares about you.”

“The two are not mutually exclusive. I mean, look at you.” Sherlock sat up, waving it all off with his hand. “So he thought I was doing heroin again. What does it matter?”

John blinked. “What does it— It matters! Of course it matters.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re not.”

“And now everyone knows.”

“God, Sherlock.” 

“Drop it.”

“No. Tell me how this can possibly be anywhere near better than telling him the truth?”

“Because he thinks it makes you mentally unstable!” Sherlock yelled. At John’s startled reaction, Sherlock took a deep breath, not quite managing to use an indoor-voice as he continued: “He called them mentally unstable, and I’d rather have him think of me as an addict than have him think _that_ about me.”

John was stumped. Many of Lestrade’s comments throughout the last few days had made him want to crawl out of his skin, but he hadn’t believed Sherlock would listen to any of it. Not really. Sherlock never listened. Fragments of things he had written on the forum went through John’s head – _He prides himself on being smarter than everyone else, so how can he be this stupid?_ , _I really want to leave and never, ever see him again_ , _if I can shape up and eat properly even though I don’t want to, if I can stop being an idiot, why can’t he?_ — and he wondered how many of them had stuck with Sherlock the same way Lestrade’s comment apparently had.

“He didn’t mean it like that,” John said when he finally found words again.

“Says the man who repeatedly states that I’m not sane.”

“That’s how I know Lestrade doesn’t mean it.”

Sherlock sighed, suddenly looked extremely tired. “But what if you’re right?”

“We’re… we’re not,” John said, shaking his head. He sat down on the coffee table in front of him, putting a hand on Sherlock’s knee. “Sherlock, listen to me, you’re the most brilliant person I’ve ever met. You’re completely mental – let’s not kid ourselves – but you’re not mentally unstable. Or insane. The things I’ve written on the forum, I wrote most of those things when I was angry or scared. I know it doesn’t—“

“You detailed what I eat,” Sherlock interrupted and John shut up immediately. “You can’t do that. Do you have any idea how much energy it takes for me to not do exactly that? Or to convince myself that no one’s actually watching me eat?”

John shook his head.

“I need to be able to tell myself that I’m just being paranoid.”

John wet his lips, nodding. “Okay.”

“Now, tell me that’s not insane or unstable,” Sherlock muttered. There was something almost disobedient in Sherlock’s voice, as if he was challenging John to disagree with him.

“It’s not insane or unstable,” John said. “It’s coping and recovery.”

“But I’m not me without it.”

There was definitely disobedience in his voice this time, but underneath the edge, John thought he heard a sincere belief in that statement, and that scared him. He squeezed Sherlock’s knee gently.

“I haven’t known you without it; I don’t even remember how it was knowing you and not known this, but… I do know that it takes an enormous strength to get up the way you do. Again and again. That’s all you, nothing else. You wouldn’t be the same without your experiences and struggles, but that doesn’t mean it defines every part of who you are. The part that fights, the part that wants to live and control your own life, that would be there regardless. Your intelligence. Your music. Your chemistry research, your interest in forensics, your work… That’s you. That would be the same.”

While John had been talking, Sherlock’s eyes had drifted away and John wasn’t completely sure that he had heard him. He squeezed Sherlock’s knee again to bring him back.

“You’re not your eating disorder,” he said when Sherlock met his eyes.

Sherlock flinched at the last words. It almost made John smile.

“I’m sorry for what I wrote at the forum,” he said. “If it, if _I_ made you feel like… If I made you doubt yourself or what I think of you, I’m sorry. You’re the most important person in my life, and I love you.”

“You’re an idiot,” Sherlock mumbled.

“Stop that,” John said, harsher than he meant to. “I do a lot of idiotic things, I know that, but loving you is _not_ one of them.”

Sherlock looked completely stunned, his mouth slightly open.

“It’s all right,” John continued. “I know what you mean when you say it, but stop it. You don’t have to reply to it at all; I don’t care, it doesn’t change things. Just stop saying that loving you makes me an idiot. It doesn’t, because loving you is not stupid. You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me. All of this included.”

Sherlock sat quiet for a long time, his eyes fixed on John, and therefore John waited patiently. Then Sherlock suddenly nodded and said: 

“I mean what you think I mean.”


	16. Chapter 16

Two days later, Sherlock was back at Scotland Yard. John had reluctantly gone to his shift at the surgery, and this was the best Sherlock had come up with to escape the emptiness of the flat. DI Tait’s old office was still officially unoccupied, but since the police had started working on the Angel of Death case, it had been used by Sherlock in one capacity or another. Today he went through the files of all the assumed suicides who could have been the victim of the Angel of Death. Donovan and Gartner had been easier to persuade to give him access than he had expected, but then, this was grit work that they most likely would have outsourced anyway.

They had found forty-two recorded insulin suicides across the country during the last four years, thirty-nine of which had some kind of eating disorder. It was still early in the investigation to tell – there would have to be interviews with families and perhaps even exhumations of bodies to be sure – but it looked like none of the women in the files had a natural link to insulin, making them all likely victims. The records were all acceptable for suicides, but disturbingly inadequate for murders. The fact they all were technically suicides didn’t reduce Sherlock’s frustration, but it kept the worst of his annoyance at bay. He, too, had deemed it a suicide when he first stumbled on it. It would be a long process to gather the evidence needed to convict their suspect for all of these murders, but Sherlock was sure the right man had been arrested.

“When did you get here?” Lestrade said, popping his head in the door.

Sherlock looked at the clock on the opposite wall. “Ninety minutes ago.”

“John’s not here?”

“No,” Sherlock said, turning back to photos of a girl found in her school’s music room. “He had to do ‘real work’ today, as he put it.”

“Speaking of that,” Lestrade said, still standing in the doorway. “What are you doing here?”

“Your job.”

“We got the guy. You never care about the rest of it. _Actual_ ‘police work’ isn’t your thing, we both know that.”

“He talked almost forty women into killing themselves,” Sherlock muttered. “It’s fascinating.”

“They weren’t the hardest to convince, though.”

That comment forced Sherlock to put down the photographs and look at Lestrade, eyes narrowed. “Did you need something?”

Lestrade stepped inside, closing the door behind him. Sherlock just raised a questioning eyebrow, but he felt trapped.

“I’m sorry about the drug test,” Lestrade said, after clearing his throat. He looked terribly guilty – which frankly served him right.

“I told you I was clean.”

“You can hardly blame me for not taking your word.”

Sherlock smiled, though only barely. “I suppose not.”

“No,” Lestrade mirrored the short smile. “What is it about this case, Sherlock?”

Sherlock tensed up. “I told you: it’s fascinating.”

“I’m sure it is.” Lestrade shrugged. “But I’ve seen enough coppers with personal interest in seemingly random cases to buy that this is just professional interest.”

“You were sure that I was using heroin; this conversation alone has proven that you can’t trust your observational skills.”

“Fine, be that way,” Lestrade said, sighing. “I should get back, anyway. Play nice with Donovan and Gartner, would you?”

“If they play nice with me,” Sherlock muttered, looking down on the photographs again. Lestrade seemed to get the hint, because shortly afterwards he left the room without another word.

Sherlock looked over his shoulder to make sure Lestrade had walked away. When he didn’t see anyone at all in the hallway outside the office, he leaned back in his chair, rubbing his face with one hand. He had no idea what had ever possessed him to come back here today.

* * *

In the early afternoon Lestrade had stopped by Tait’s office with a pre-packed sandwich and a small box orange juice that he’d left for Sherlock. Sherlock had done his best to tune him out completely, so even if Lestrade had stated his reasons for bringing him food, Sherlock had no idea what that reason was. He had just moved the offensive items to the edge of the table with a biro and then easily ignored them. He hadn’t been lying altogether when he’d told Lestrade that this was an interesting case, after all.

When his stomach grumbled for the first time today, Sherlock side eyed the sandwich as if it were at fault. He had eaten as much as he could possibly get down before leaving Baker Street – three eggs, and a toast with beans – as a precaution to not have to eat anything while here, but as the afternoon went on, it became harder to block out the sandwich’s existence.

Sherlock reached for it. Honey Roast Ham & Egg – that sounded absolutely revolting, but at least it wasn’t cheese. Formed ham on the other hand… And mayonnaise. 354 calories, not unbearable per se, but forcing himself to eat it would be a disaster. The juice box was even worse – not even counting the fact that he was supposed to drink it through a straw! He hadn’t had oranges of any kind for years, and he didn’t need them now. Not that this chemical and sugar stuffed excuse for orange juice was even comparable to the freshly pressed oranges that had practically kept him alive some years ago. Still, he didn’t need oranges, real or otherwise.

The number of times Lestrade had brought him food were blissfully few, so Sherlock imagined this to be a ‘I’m sorry for thinking you’re a junkie’ sandwich. A ridiculously bad peace offering. He put the sandwich down at the far end of the table again, glaring at both it and the juice box. 

Perhaps he should fill up with some water, see if he could manage some crisps. Nick another cigarette from Lestrade.

Or he could eat the sandwich, because he wasn’t insane!

Sherlock sighed, reaching for the sandwich again. He opened the package; the smell alone made his stomach turn. This wasn’t going to work, he knew that before he took out the sandwich and bit into it, through stubbornness alone. The bread was mushy, the mayonnaise flavour overwhelming. The bite grew in his mouth, but he managed to swallow it down. The second bite was just as offensive, but easier to swallow. The third was impossible. It just kept growing and growing, his saliva making the bread soggier and soggier until it just felt like a big chunk of poorly metabolised food that had just gone down to come back up again.

He gagged, spitting it out in his hand. With his eyes tightly closed, he dry-swallowed repeatedly to make sure the first two bites he’d taken wouldn’t follow. When he was sure he would keep it down he opened his eyes, scraping the disgusting lump of bread off his hand and down into the bin under the table. A cold sweat had broken out on his forehead and on the back of his neck. He looked out through the damned glass walls to the office to determine whether anyone might have seen him, but at least right now the corridor was empty. He threw away the rest of the sandwich as well and let the juice box follow. He felt sick, and kept swallowing hard for over a minute. When he finally dared to leave the room to wash his hand he wasn’t quite sure if he hated himself, Lestrade or the sandwich most at that moment. John could say whatever he wanted, this felt both insane and unstable on so many levels.

* * *

The afternoon passed slowly. The two bites of sandwich that he had swallowed continued to weigh heavily in his stomach, and it took hours for the nausea to leave. 

Sherlock wouldn’t claim that each suicide was worse than the previous – because that was a ridiculous exaggeration – but at least to himself he could admit that it became more difficult to stay objective with each new set of crime scene photos. It was hard to shake the feeling that the walls seemed to close in on him, no matter how many times he took breaks to pace around the room. When Lestrade stopped by the office at a quarter past seven, the interruption was as welcomed as it was annoying.

“I’m off for the day,” Lestrade said. “Which means _you’re_ off for the day, because I need to lock up.”

“No wonder you lot don’t get anything done,” Sherlock muttered. “I have one file left.”

Lestade narrowed his eyes for a moment. “Fine,” he then said. “Thirty more minutes, then I’m kicking you out.”

“I’ll be done in twenty-three.”

“Good. I’m getting a cuppa. Do you want?”

Sherlock stopped going through the file in front of him. Answering ‘no’ would be easy and not suspicious at all. It was tea, people turned down tea all the time. Especially the ghastly kind they provided here. He shook his head, starting to sort the file again, hoping that Lestrade hadn’t noticed the pause.

He didn’t seem to, because he said: “Come by my office, not a second later than a quarter to.” and left after Sherlock had hummed in agreement.

Sherlock got up to close the door Lestrade had left open, resting his forehead against it and not caring who might walk past and see him. Not that anyone would; most people were out of here at 17:00. 18:00 at the latest. So there was no point in closing the door either.

Sherlock felt a rush of anger. This was ridiculous, it was just tea and he shouldn’t react this way! He had almost made it through this case – admittedly, he hadn’t been the one solving it – without losing too much weight, without picking up too many old habits, and without falling too far behind on his calorie intake. He could do this for another couple of days, no matter what Lestrade threw his way or whatever landmine he stepped on – or however John had put it.

The thought of the soggy bread in his hand made him gag again, though, and the knowledge of how close he had been to vomiting inside Scotland Yard made his cheeks heat in shame, even if it hadn’t been on purpose. Through all the years during which he had occasionally purged, he had never done it in this building. He had, to his knowledge, never eaten anything in this building that had been worth bringing up.

Until today.

Sherlock pushed away from the door and walked back to the desk, but he didn’t sit down. He opened the last file. Lestrade had been right, there was nothing for him here. The puzzle was solved. The case had never been thrilling. Perhaps a little, at first (the idea of serial suicides was always alluring) but it had never been truly exciting. It had been something to prove, and he had been right. He had been able to do this, but for some reason it didn’t feel like a victory. 

One more suicide and he’d be done, one more file and he’d be able to put it behind him. One more and he could take back the control of his life! One more and perhaps he would be able to sleep… Hopefully.

This victim was sixteen, according to the autopsy report. Sherlock closed his eyes. He too, had been suicidal at that age. He didn’t want to think about what he might have done if someone had offered him such a neat way out back then. Before he had clawed his way back up for the first time. Before the heroin. Before the work. Before John. He would have been grateful, back then, he realised, but by now it had been over two decades since he had honestly wanted to die.

The overdose had been accidental. It really had. No one would probably ever believe that.

He closed the file before opening his eyes. There was nothing to tell; there really, _really_ wasn’t. Except… that he was going insane, because right now he wished he had taken heroin instead of eating that sandwich.

No wonder Lestrade believed he was using again.

...or that he thought the case was personal.

Sherlock looked down at his hand, at the small, white marks. His battle scars. They had faded, just like the needle marks on his arm had, but they were still clearly there for those who knew what to look for. 

It was just a matter of time, he realised, before Lestrade would figure it out. He could still control parts of it, and he needed to be in control of this. He put on his coat and his scarf, his outer armour, and closed Tait’s office. He walked down the corridor, and with each step the tightness in his chest grew stronger until he thought he’d suffocate. Luckily, he had almost reached Lestrade’s office by then. He stopped, just out of sight from the open door, and practically forced air down his lungs.

He took the last two steps to Lestrade’s office before he lost his nerve.

“That was fast,” Lestrade said as Sherlock stepped into his office, but his grin disappeared when Sherlock closed the door. “Have you find something?”

“No, except for potentially tying him to the used insulin batches there’s little, if anything, in the files that would support murder. The way to connect him to the victims will be through their internet habits, if it will be at all possible.”

“What is it, then?”

Sherlock took a deep breath. “You can’t bring me food.”

“What are you talking about?” Lestrade looked confused.

“Food. Or tea. Or that ridiculous excuse for juice. Or anything like it.”

“I know what food is. I meant, why?”

“I have an eating disorder.”

It felt like he had screamed at the top of his lungs and that the words still echoed between the walls, but Sherlock was quite sure it hadn’t been much more than a whisper. At least Lestrade’s wide-eyed stare made it clear that he had heard it.

“What?” Lestrade stuttered.

“I have… an eating disorder,” Sherlock repeated, marginally louder. It was harder getting the words out the second time, but he was surprised how steady his voice was, because his legs could barely keep him upright.

Lestrade sank back into his chair, his mouth open in surprise and shock. “Like the women?”

Sherlock nodded.

“Like anorexia?”

“I don’t have—“ Sherlock snapped defensively, but then he paused and nodded instead. “Yes. I don’t meet all the criteria for a diagnosis, but my clinical picture is close to that of anorexia nervosa.”

While he talked Sherlock had to force himself to keep looking at Lestrade, and to not wrap his coat closer around himself when Lestrade’s eyes inevitably moved down over his torso. The silence that followed was excruciating, and Sherlock could feel himself being reduced from a human being to a medical disorder in Lestrade’s eyes. That was exactly what he had wanted to avoid; it was more than enough that John looked at him like that from time to time.

“I have it under control,” Sherlock finally said, hoping desperately that it was true. Either way, it made Lestrade look up again and when their eyes met Sherlock continued: “I have it under control, but it makes it hard to be around food I’m not prepared for.”

“Sherlock, I… This case...”

“The case has nothing to do with me.”

“But—“

“No.”

Lestrade rubbed his face with both hands. “How… are you?”

“I’m okay,” Sherlock said after a moment of hesitation. “I’m not fine, but… but I’m okay.”

“Okay.” Lestrade nodded. “Is there anything, I…”

Sherlock shook his head. “Just don’t bring me food unless I ask you to.”

“I won’t.”

“Good.” Sherlock said, clearing his throat to get the full sound of his voice back. “Thank you. You can lock up Tait’s office. I’ll come back tomorrow and look at the last file then.”

“You don’t have to—“

“Nothing’s changed,” Sherlock cut him off, already with his hand on the door handle. “I’ll come back tomorrow and look at the last file. I just, I needed you to know.”

“Okay.” Lestrade nodded again. “Thank you for… I’m glad you told me.”

He didn’t look glad at all. It looked like he had aged a decade in just a few minutes. Sherlock smiled joylessly, nodding once. He left the office without another word and headed straight for the lifts. His hand was trembling when he pressed the button, and as he waited for the lift to arrive most of his energy went into keep standing straight and not turning around to see if Lestrade came after him. As soon as he stepped inside the lift, he leaned heavily against the wall, forgetting for a long time to press the button to the entrance floor. 

That had been… well, he had no idea what that had been, but somewhere underneath what could be called a panic attack, he felt relieved. Perhaps even glad.


	17. Chapter 17

John finally found his mobile – it was in his jacket, in the bedroom – after it had stopped ringing. When he saw Lestrade’s name on the caller ID, he sighed deeply as he pressed redial; Lestrade only called at this hour if something had happened.

Lestrade answered on the first ring. “ _John? Hi. Sorry, did I…”_

“Hello. No, it’s fine, I just couldn’t find my phone.”

“ _Is Sherlock home?_ ”

“No, I thought he was at—“ John turned around on the spot, looking to make sure Sherlock hadn’t somehow come home without him noticing. A terrible feeling crept up on him and his grip around the mobile tightened. “What’s happened?”

“ _He left here about fifteen minutes ago, I’m sure he’s still on his way,_ ” Greg said, not sounding reassuring at all. “ _John… Why didn’t either of you bother telling me that he has an eating disorder?_ ”

A breath got stuck in John’s throat. “He told you?”

“ _Yes._ ”

“He actually said he has an eating disorder?”

“ _Yes! Christ, John, that’s not something you forget or make up._ ”

“Sorry, I just…” John couldn’t help smiling. “I’ve never heard him say— He just calls it his ‘thing’ if he mentions it at all.”

“ _So it’s really, it’s… He does—_ ”

“Yes.”

“ _Why the hell didn’t you tell me?_ ”

“He didn’t want you to know.”

“ _Still, this case—_ ”

“I know.”

Lestrade sighed deeply on the other end. “ _He’s been sitting with the suicides the_ entire _day._ ”

“I’m sorry, Greg.” John said, taking the phone from his ear momentarily. “I think I hear someone at the door. I have to go and see.”

“ _Go._ ”

“Thanks. I promise to talk to you later.” John hung up before Lestrade had a chance to say anything more.

“Sherlock, is that you?” he called out, but got no reply.

Whatever sound he thought he’d heard was gone and everything was quiet again. When he stepped into the stairwell, he saw Sherlock sitting on the bottom step, slouched against the wall. Filled with relief to have him home, John walked down and sat next to him on the stairs.

“Lestrade called,” he said quietly when Sherlock did nothing to acknowledge his presence. “How do you feel?”

Sherlock pushed away from the wall and instead fell onto John’s shoulder. John wrapped an arm around him, kissing his hair.

“I have an eating disorder,” Sherlock whispered, the last two words barely making it out.

Something fluttered in John’s chest and he smiled, still with his face in Sherlock’s hair. “I know, and that’s all right.”

Sherlock shook his head.

John held him closer, rocking them slowly back and forth. John was completely calm. It felt like he shouldn’t be, it felt like he should be terrified about what would come, but he wasn’t. Not now, at least. Right now, sitting with Sherlock in his arms on the stairs, everything felt strangely hopeful, because whatever came now would be new.

After a long time in silence, John kissed Sherlock’s hair again and whispered: “You’re the strongest, bravest person I know.”

Sherlock didn’t respond, but at least he didn’t protest, and that had to be good.

They stayed on the stairs until John’s bad leg started to ache.

* * *

John called in sick to the surgery the next day to accompany Sherlock to Scotland Yard. When Sherlock had engrossed himself in the suicide files again, John slipped out of Tait’s office and walked over to Lestrade’s. He knocked on the open door. Lestrade looked as if he hadn’t got much sleep last night; John felt a wave of sympathy washing over him.

“Morning,” John said, closing the door behind him as he stepped inside. “Thank you for calling last night.”

“Yeah, I figured…” said Lestrade, waving his hand when he couldn’t find the end of the sentence. “I’m sorry.”

“God, don’t be. I appreciate it.”

“I wasn’t sure if— I didn’t know what to…”

“Yeah,” John said, nodding. “It’s a common feeling.”

They both pressed for half-smiles, before looking away from each other and letting the awkward silence stretch.

“How are you doing?” John finally asked.

Lestrade blinked. “Me? I don’t, I don’t know.”

John forced another smile. “When I found out, I freely sought out Harry’s company just to get other problems to think about.”

“Are you suggesting I’d call my ex-wife?”

John chuckled. “No.”

“Figured.” Lestrade sighed deeply. “I keep thinking about all these times when I have— How long have you known?”

“About ten years, but it’s been going on for much longer. I suspect since he was pre-pubescent.”

“Christ.” Lestrade rubbed his face. “And you never thought at the beginning of the case to slip me a note ‘FYI, Sherlock has anorexia’?”

“He doesn’t,” John said firmly. “He doesn’t have anorexia.”

“Yeah, he said something about that, but—“

“He doesn’t fit the diagnosis,” John said, cutting him off. “He might have, at some point, but he doesn’t now and for some reason that’s very important to him. So just… don’t ever call it that.”

Lestrade nodded, his expression that of someone who was taking in too much information and trying to make sense of it. “How is he?”

“After last night, or…?”

“Let’s start there.”

“I’m not sure,” said John, frowning slightly. “I think he managed to sleep more than you seem to have done, at least.”

“That’s not very hard,” Lestrade said. “This is why you didn’t come to me with the case sooner, isn’t it?”

John nodded.

“That’s something,” Lestrade muttered. “I had trouble believing that you would be stupid enough to keep it from us.”

“Thanks, I think,” John said with an almost genuine smile. “It’s been hard to know what’s up and down lately.”

“I can’t even begin to imagine.” Lestrade sighed. “This is it, though, right? This is the thing you haven’t told me?”

“Yes.”

Lestrade relaxed at the reassurance, but he hesitated before continuing. “He said he was all right, but is he?”

“He is,” John said. It was perhaps stretching reality, but he figured it would put Lestrade at ease and protect Sherlock’s privacy by not discussing him in too much detail. “This case has just been a little… trying, but he is okay.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“Yeah,” John said, nodding. “Anyway, I should get back to Sherlock. I just wanted to check on you.”

Lestrade chuckled. “Thought I needed it, did you?”

“Yes, and _I_ needed it.” John took a deep breath, licking his lips. “It’s meant a lot, you know, that you’ve asked. About Sherlock. About us. About… me. Even though I didn’t answer, I really appreciate you asking.”

“Anyone with eyes in their sockets could see something was off.”

“But only you asked.”

Lestrade tried to press for a smile, but failed terribly. John managed better. He wondered briefly if he’d appreciated someone else asking, and the answer was probably no.

He nodded once, turning to leave, but before he reached the door Lestrade blurted out:

“Why did he tell me?”

John stopped and looked back at him.

“Why did he tell me now when we’re done?” Lestrade asked again, making John believe that this was the one thing he had wanted to ask the entire time. “Have I made him worse, is that why?”

“No,” John said, shaking his head. “He told you because he trusts you.”

* * *

John took the detour to the break room to make tea before heading back to Tait’s office. As an afterthought he put sugar in Sherlock’s tea; it was a gamble he felt willing to take today.

Sherlock looked up when John opened the door to the office, his eyes stopping at the mugs before going back to work. “It didn’t take you twenty minutes to make tea.”

“I checked on Lestrade.” John put down the tea right under his nose.

Sherlock wrapped his hands around the mug, looking back up at John. “Mm?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Sherlock raised his eyebrows.

“I think his world is a bit lopsided at the moment, but he’ll bounce back,” John said. “I told him not to worry; that you’re okay.”

“Am I?”

“Are you?”

Sherlock shrugged. He brought the tea to his mouth, but put it down again with a frown. “There’s sugar in it.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s how you take your tea.”

Sherlock looked down, into the mug.

“I can go and make you another one,” John said.

“It’s all right,” said Sherlock, tasting it, just to put it as far away from him at the table as he could.

John smiled, sitting down to wait for Sherlock to go through the last suicide if that’s what he needed to do to mentally close this case. If he needed something else, John would make sure to stay with him for that too.

It was okay, or at least it would be.

John was sure of it.


	18. Epilogue

* * *

_Four months later_

* * *

John peeked into the kitchen. Sherlock was dissecting a human hand at the table, lost to the rest of the world. The hand had magically appeared two days ago, on the same day the verdict in Angel of Death case had come and the story had started to get media attention. The timing was a little bit too good, but John wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Not unexpectedly, Sherlock crashed a couple of days after they had finally stepped away from the case. He had slept for twelve, fifteen hours per day and John suspected that he hadn’t kept much of what he had forced himself to eat. Now he seemed had reached some sort of balance again, with the really bad days coming further and further apart, but he had been quiet and closed off for weeks. John felt as if Sherlock wasn’t letting him in anymore, but as long as Sherlock seemed to improve there was no need for alarm.

John backed away, bringing the laptop with him to the sofa. As he turned it on and logged onto _LovED Ones_ , he couldn’t help finding it slightly ironic that he still tried to hide his online activities from Sherlock.

It was five months since he had last visited forum, three weeks before they had been forced to bring the case to Lestrade. During the case, John hadn’t imagine ever going back there. It was, in multiple ways, ruined for him as a safe haven. Now here he was, because he couldn’t help feeling that he had left a dead rat on the community’s metaphorical doorstep. The media’s coverage of the verdict (their back-tracking stories of the case and the trial, their killer profiles, and their sudden realisation that eating disorders and suicides were things) really put John’s teeth on edge, and he wanted to check in and see how everyone was doing. Personally, he had managed to convince himself that he had moved on, and that he didn’t care anymore. Especially since the man had been found guilty on all charges – murder, assault, and serious professional misconduct – even though he’d pleaded not guilty and refused to provide a motive.

John had expected to perhaps find a message or two from his friends, asking him how he was – it had been a long time without any sign of life – or asking for his opinion about the Angel of Death. Maybe a note from bubblenox. He had not expected his inbox to be bursting with two hundred and sixteen new messages.

For almost a solid minute John stared at the number next to the small letter icon. He couldn’t make sense of it, and he hesitated to open the inbox. His first thought was that they had traced the case back to him, because that had been his fear since the second he heard about it on the news. He didn’t even dare to imagine what that type of exposure would do to Sherlock.

It took a moment for him to convince himself that that couldn’t be the reason for all the messages. Lestrade had promised that his and Sherlock’s names were nowhere near the paperwork. And even if by bad luck and chance it would have showed up, no one would link it to the forum.

…at least not in just two days.

John took a deep breath, glancing towards the kitchen, before opening the inbox. He scrolled through the list of messages, most, if not all, of them were comments on a post called _I apologise_ , which was odd, since he hadn’t bothered with titles on his entries for years. He kept scrolling until he found a user he knew and trusted (tombola_jr) and opened their comment. It was written nine days ago.

_I don’t know what to say.. That took guts!_ the comment read. _I’m so proud of both of you. Stay safe <3_

John clicked on the next familiar user he saw.

_Whatever it is you’re talking about, don’t apologise. It’s not your fault, I’m sure of it. And take it from someone who knows: he won’t leave. He cares so much for you._

“What?” John mumbled, more confused than worried now and he finally opened the entry everyone had commented on.

It read:

_Hello,_

_I don’t know any of you, but I’m aware that some of you know me far more intimately than I would prefer. My name is Sherlock Holmes, and I’m a consultant to the Metropolitan police (among other things). I’m also the person referred to here as S – a great imagination has never been one of my flatmate’s strengths. Speaking of John, because that’s his name, I want to say thank you to each of you who has helped and supported him throughout the years. I’m aware that I owe John’s continued presence in my life, perhaps not solely, but definitely partly to all of you. By extension that means that I, in part, owe you my life. I won’t go as far as to say that I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you, but you have undoubtedly made things better and for that I’m grateful._

_The reason I’m writing is to inform you that a news story will most likely break in a couple of weeks. When it does, you will know what I’m referring to. Some of you have a very personal involvement in it, but it will affect all of you. The media frenzy that will undoubtedly follow won’t find this forum; John and I have made sure to keep it out of the investigation, and nothing you’ve done here has endangered anyone. You should know, though, that it’s thanks to John and this forum that justice will be done. I can only regret that I couldn’t stay objective enough to bring this to a swifter close. For that, I apologise._

_S_

“Sherlock!” John yelled, without taking his eyes off the screen. Nothing of that made any sense. He read it again, and again, but it didn’t help. He looked at the date. Five weeks, it was posted five weeks ago. John tried to think back on what had happened five weeks ago, but there was nothing standing out. They had worked a short fraud case about then, and a kidnapping of a dog. There hadn’t been any major setbacks. There had been six days with nothing but toast with honey on the menu, but… that wasn’t bad in comparison.

“What?”

John jumped. Sherlock was standing in the entrance to the sitting room, still with a scalpel in his hand, looking very annoyed.

All John could do was point at the laptop.

Sherlock’s irritated frown disappeared, and he blinked. “I thought you had seen that already.”

“And not said anything about it?”

Sherlock shrugged. “I thought you were mad.”

John stared. “I’m, I’m not. At all.”

Sherlock’s shoulders dropped, and he exhaled. A small, relieved smile breaking through.

“You really thought I’d be mad?” asked John.

“You haven’t precisely reacted well to my other activities on the forum.”

John smiled. That was true, and it wasn’t a completely unreasonable assumption that he would be upset now too, perhaps he even should be mad. Sherlock had, after all, robbed him of his anonymity without even asking him about it, but the idea of being angry with Sherlock for the post seemed ludicrous. Judging by Sherlock’s appearance right now made it clear that he hadn’t thought so.

“I’m not mad. I promise, I’m not,” John said, his throat closing. He pointed at the laptop again. “Sherlock, that’s… Are you okay?”

Sherlock shook his head. “I don’t know.”

John got up and walked over to hug him. Sherlock leaned into his arms, but didn’t hug him back.

“I’m so proud of you,” John whispered against his neck.

“John…” Sherlock mumbled. “You’re an idiot.”

John chuckled, holding him closer. “You too, Sherlock. You too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all of you for being with me through out this series. Thank you for reading and sharing this story with me, it has meant more than you can imagine. 
> 
> And once again, a big thank you to [Nagaem_C](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Nagaem_C/pseuds/Nagaem_C) for all her help.


End file.
